My computer had a virus at first and i lost my recovery disk for my compaq presario , so i borrowed my?

friends recovery disk, which was, dell windows home edition, and it worked but since it wasn't my computer's recovery disk the drivers weren't installed and it had a countdown to put in the activation code but we didn't have that, so when the time finally came it wouldn't let me enter the computer unless i wrote the activation code, but now i have a laptop vista and my computer says its vista compatible. when i put the recovery disk on the laptop nothing happened. So i'm asking help on what to do now?