advice leads to non-functioning laptop

[pranaman]

I have an HP Folio 13 2000 running Windows 10. I've had weird issues, like
* random erratic mouse movement
* touchpad would stop working out of the blue
* keyboard would stop working out of the blue

I posted this on an hp forum. An HP intern suggested 2 things:
* get missing drivers updated - http://www8.hp.com/in/en/campaigns/hpsupportassistant/hpsupport.html
* update the BIOS - http://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp60501-61000/sp60659.exe

I ran them. The BIOS flasher ran and it rebooted without consent.

Came up ok the first time. I rebooted after, and I saw a screen, something like Boot Failure... mentioned something about F3. Never saw it before.

I thought it had a SATA HD, and that it failed. Or the BIOS flasher did something.

I carefully took it apart, saw a tiny 128 GB solid state mSATA. I reassembled it, powered it on, now the Caps Lock blinks 3 times, with the F12 key lit.

I read that means memory. I removed the keyboard and cover again, removed the single 4 GB RAM to test if it would say memory error on screen.

Still boots the same. I think the BIOS needs to be reflashed, or it's the drive or the memory.

Kind of stuck. Any suggestions?

 

[hang-the-9]

It's probably a failing motherboard, maybe bad keyboard. I've seen bad keyboards causing systems not to boot. The BIOS flash may have reset the drive settings to a different mode which can cause boot failures. Can you get into the BIOS screen?

 

[pranaman]

Thanks, when I boot, the screen is blank. I don't think I can get to the bios.

 

[hang-the-9]

Thanks, when I boot, the screen is blank. I don't think I can get to the bios.

You did not say you had no image on the screen, just that it came up with a boot failure. No screen could be a several things from bad RAM, bad motherboard, bad screen. With the blink codes you get that signify bad RAM, it could be RAM but it could also be bad RAM slots. Which means new motherboard is needed.

 

[pranaman]

Right, I did not mention that there was no image on the screen. My mistake.

Thanks for your insight, looks like I'm going shopping.