[justrobert]

I haven't had to recover from an OEM vendor install in awhile, but if I remember right there are many situations where the user does not need to input the serial number for activation.

[zeusk]

Windows Vista and up support reading device activation information from the system BIOS.

However, in this case you wouldn't see "Contact Dell for Support" on a lenovo laptop as demonstrated during the trial (see screenshot above).

[justrobert]

The image gallery doesn't tell us if they were using a dell recovery cd or something else.