Can't open Windows Media Center ona DV7t notebook PC.

I have a friend who recently purchased an HP dv7t 17” notebook and has had several problems with it from the get go, including a bad wireless network card. Yesterday for the first time he tried opening Windows Media Center and received a message that Media Center could not open. He called HP tech support and after an hour on the phone with a technician who he didn’t get anywhere with he’s at his wits end, he’s already spent over 13 hours with HP support regarding several problems with this computer and they want him to either reformat the hard drive or send it in for repair yet again. He feels with all the problems he's been having he would like a new unit but they are telling him since he has it for more than 20 days they will not replace it. He also asked to speak to a supervisor or higher up and was told there was no one else he could speak to, which sounds very strange to me.

Anyway my question is, isn’t there a recovery partition from which he can reinstall the Media Center application, or would he actually have to reinstall Vista from scratch?