Yes, I tried reseating the RAM, and removing 1 DIMM at a time, and changing which slot each sits in. I took the entire laptop apart, unplugged everything except the RAM, CPU, and display, and tried to boot. Same problem. So it's either the CPU or the motherboard. You can find the CPU for this laptop on ebay for $7.50, so I bought a new one to try it. If that doesn't work, then it's the motherboard, and I guess I'll get a new laptop.
It sure as hell won't be an HP laptop. I got *this* laptop in the nvidia settlement over the last defective HP laptop I had. I presume the same thing happened here, since it always ran really hot, and the heatsink design looks nearly the same. It's pretty obvious the motherboard is dead from my description, but HP tech support tried to charge me $60 to tell me this, and then tried to sell me a $99 "extended warranty" which covers exactly nothing. This is a program designed to take advantage of unsavy users, and it's pretty despicable.
