If there is a recovery partition on the hard drive, does that mean the recovery disk is only a partial widows install and requires the hard drive to be intact to re-image the C: drive?

How could I combine the 2 to make something useful?

Normally, the drive has 2 partitions.

The first is about one gig and holds the modified windows installation cd for that rig. It includes all the drivers for the original factory setup. included somewhere in there, is the factory cd key for windows.

You should be able to access the (hidden) windows cd and make a copy ... but I don't see much sense 'cause it'll only install on a like/matching system. You could remove the cd key and possibly use it and a different windows cd on another system.

The second partition is the location that the o/s will automatically be installed to.

i was looking into doing a repair for somebody since I'm partially laid off