Recovery Partition

Hey guys i recently bought a laptop (HP Pavillion dv9000 ) from my friend, it still has all of his files, downloaded programs, ect on it. I would like to reformat the pc to remove all this extra junk. The PC has a recover partition on it however it is not working correctly, it simply will reboot the PC when ussing Recovery Manager. The primary drive on the PC has been partitioned into 2 drives. The partition with the operating system is still the active partition. Is this perhaps why i am having difficulties in using the recovery partition? Any suggestions on how i can fix the problem i would like to keep the extra partition and use the recovery partition if it all possible. (pc's OS is Vista)

 

Looks like the restore partition is damaged, not sure, what is the exact model number? There are many dv9000 series model numbers, have a look

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/prodTopCategory?product=1842186&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=

 

unless it has been uninstalled, look in the start menu for PC help and tools. under that see if there is an option to create restore disc set. If there is, get yourself a couple blank DVD+R's and a blacnk CD. THen create a restore disc set. This will allow you to restore the computer to factory specs.