The recovery drive is unrelated to a full install. The recovery drive just lets you boot up in a bare bones mode (safe mode) to make fixes. If you can make the fixes at that point, there’s no re-install of Windows anyway. If you can’t make the fixes, then there’s the issue of re-installing Windows, which means having the license. Assuming you have the license from the prior owner it would be Windows 7.
Sorry. I confused Recovery Drive with Emergency Boot Disk. The EBD is the one that lets you boot up in safe mode. The Recovery Drive is the full reboot in the latest Windows (Windows 10) and all of your registry settings (i.e. the settings each app records in Windows as your configuration for that app, etc.).
Well, it might be “Windows 7 upgraded to 10”. (Directly using the Microsoft upgrade software I would imagine.)
OTOH, it may be the HD was totally wiped and a fresh OS (Win 10 Pro) installed. I’ll check with the seller - their communication, at least B4 the sale, was good.
Anyway, you cleared up something for me: I thought the whole “recovery drive” bit was more than it is. Thanks for the enlightenment!
Obviously I need to make full images of the boot drives on all my computers. Yeesh. That’ll keep some electrons whirring about for a while...........