I called Hp 1 month out of warranty on the keyboard issue. I found out later that it was an known problem and the “work around” was to remove the battery and re-place it. There was no help from HP. Just a run around.
Now that I have this machine up and running I’m afraid to turn it off or attempt a restart.
Is it an HP Dv7 laptop with an AMD chip?
If so, Vista bricks it due to a certain windows Vista update.
My fix: Replace the OS with Se7en.
It hasn’t bricked since, boots and runs fine.
I can buy any number of Dell “business class” laptops from my work when they go off warranty for $100+tax ,, typically they’re 14” core2-duo , 4gb ram and 160gb drive ,, freshly reloaded with XP ... If you want one let me know..