How do I access or open the Recovery Drive on an HP Pavilion dv5000?

It is normally buried deep into the hdd on a secret partition. Download partitionmagic and make it seen by your os :)

When you first boot your PC there will be instructions to press some keys for different functions. On my HPs, F10 gets you into the Recovery partitions.

Hi mate. They normally are, excuse me if it wasn't in this case. I know on my acer they nick around 10gb of the hdd on a secret partition. Do you not have a disc to use?>

Sorry, but they are not in a "secret partition". On most PCs they are in a small (8-10G) partition that is generally a non-DOS partition and needs to be entered through the recovery access that is part of the boot process.