Stalka

I'm posting this for my buddy who recently had gotten a laptop but accidentally dropped it and cracked the LCD screen. The screen is completely messed up and you have to hook up a monitor to be able to see anything. Now that's not really the problem; the problem is it really needs to be reformatted. Is it possible to reformat the computer with the monitor? I would assume it is possible since when you first start windows you can see the DOS info on the monitor, but I would like to confirm this before doing something I can't go back on...Any help or opinion's would be greatly appreciated. :) TY