If the hard drive has never been wiped/reformatted, it probably has a restore partition. You can make either DVD’s or a thumb drive and do a clean install of the system, back to the original out of box state. The advantage of making the copy of this, rather than using the parition itself, is that in case of hard drive failure/replacement, etc., you still have the original backup of the operating system including all drivers, etc. for that specific laptop.
I understand all that. If you use the recovery partition and the process poops out in the middle you are screwed. So better to back up the recovery partition via DVD or thumb drive before using the recovery partition
I will find out tomorrow if the laptop came with restore DVDs or the user is supposed to make his own DVDs or thumb drive backup.