I have my sons Gateway laptop MT6457

This computer has 2 model numbers on the bottom. One is MT6457 and the other is MA3. The Operating System is Vista. There is a recovery partition. He was having problems with it booting up. It finally got to the point that it wouldn't boot up. After some work on it I finally decided to start over. I did a Quick Format on C:. I found directions on the web how to restore from the recovery partition. It didn't work so I have researched on the web and found various key combinations that should start the recovery process, but none work. The closet I have come is by pressing F8, but it will only allow booting from C: or a CD. I have thought about copying the recovery partition to a CD but thought there must be an easy way to reload Vista from the recovery partition.