paul, often times newwer computers will have a recovery partition. when the pc boots try different f# keys till you find which one is the recovery partition. try a different key on each bootup. this will give you the ability to wipe it clean. do f6, then f7, then f9 then f10 then f11 then. f11 is my guess
im free the rest of the afternoon. if you wanna drive it up to polaris i can get it going for you.