No I did not use BartPE (and may be also not Windows PE).
I have a Dell Windows 8.1 system and because the system does not start normally, It starts with Dell support screens.
One of the buttons on the Dell Support screen is to go to the command prompt.
That is what I have done and then I went to X:\windows\system32\
On the command prompt I have typed CD D: to go to the USB stick, with the portable version of Recuva on it.
Is it possible to add an option to the ini file or start parameter to tell Recuva that D:\ is the drive to recover the files on.