how do I do a system recovery on a laptop with a broken screen?

I have a rented aspire i need to return. The screen is broken, which the rental place knows about. I need to do a factory reset before i return it, but can't with the broken screen. Ive been using the laptop via an HDMI cable with my tv, but an autoupdate messed me up, and the computer is no longer sending anything to the tv. i can't see the prompts to do the reset without being able to see the screen. The rental place could do it all, but i really want to clear my personal information from the computer before i return it. I've checked around about having the screen professionally replaced, and it's a really expensive process. I guess what i'm hoping to accomplish is get the system reset done without replacing the screen. Is such a thing even possible?