Some manufacturers don't ship a restore disc, but allow you to make
one, and also have a possibly hidden small partition (less than 10 GB)
on the hard drive that contains the restore information. During the
boot process, you should briefly see a message on which key to press
to get to this recovery stuff. Or, maybe you won't get to see this
message if you have certain features enabled in the BIOS, like 'boot
time diagnostics'. Hopefully there is a way to make your own recovery
discs. Click the help & support button and search for words like
create recovery disc. Once you have them, you can do your reformat
and restore you system to 'out of the box' condition. Be sure to back
up any stuff you don't want lost.
-Paul Randall