Why won't windows 7 restart in recovery?

I am trying to reformat my hard drive and booting from the disk only gives me the option to repair not re install. In windows there is an option called recovery at which point it asks “restart you computer and continue the recovery” but then immediately brings up an error box saying “can not restart windows in recovery environment”. Is there something blocking this function? If not what the hell is the point of adding a function that only brings up an error box? Is there another way to force windows to open recovery and delete and re install winidows?