Sony Vaio VGN-NR18OE - how to do a full restore?

My sister-in-law has a Vaio VGN-NR18OE and she is having major issues with the laptop. It's having trouble booting and I just want to restore it to the factory fresh state.

I am hundreds of miles from her so I can't see the screen and I have never even physically touched this laptop. I'm hoping somebody on here can help out. Below are some details of this laptop:

purchased at the end of 2007
Core 2 duo 1.5 ghz
1gb RAM (too little for Vista, I know)
Vista Home premium
200gb hard drive
did not come with any discs

Since it did not come with any discs, I'm assuming there is a recovery partition on the hard drive but I cannot find anything in the user guide (or any where else for that matter) on how to ACCESS this partition and start the restore process.

On my old Gateway laptop, I would just put a disc in and it would start the process using the partition. My Lenovo just has a second power button that directly accesses the partition.

What do I do with this Vaio?

 

From a cold boot hit the F10. This will cause it to boot form the hidden recovery partition. The text of the menus varies from model to model so just have her read the options to you.

Gary

 

One more note:
I assume the process itself is pretty similar in all (reasonably) current Vaios.

In thatrespect, unless you want to keep a D: Partition or something like that - the process is pretty much a "walk through" and should be easy to understand.

Just back up all data on an externall medium

 

thanks so much for the responses. That is a huge help!