Glad you got it started :)  You might want to look a little deeper into the book that came with it.  The last few computers I've had always had a way to force it to read the recovery disk.  There should be a key combination you have to hold down while starting it.

Of course you have to be able to get the disk in the drive.  Sounds like maybe yours wasn't getting far enough for this to work, but it's something to try if you have this trouble again.

John