Bad accelerometer on HP Envy 14 XQ101AAR laptop causes HD shutdown

[JeffWPalmer]

The laptop was in the hands of a user who thought the best way to unstick a key was to pound their fist in the laptop (I guess they thougtht the Beats logo meant to beat the laptop)! The HD was damaged and replaced. The system would then intermittantly shut down the HD (you can hear the HD park). I replaced the MB. Same issue. Then discovered if a small object was placed under the front edge of the laptop (I would frequently do this if it was sitting on a tablecloth to keep the vents open), raising the front about an inch, the system ran perfectly. If the laptop was set level and then turned on, no HD was found. If it was in the tilted position, it would boot up, but if it was leveled, no matter how gently, the HD would get parked and the system would lock up. Since I changed the MB, my guess is that either some kind of calibration was necessary, or the actual sensor being used to detect fall/shock is on a different board.

As I mentioned, it would happen during POST on power up (no boot device found), so it isn't a Windows issue.

Software that can read the sensors (accelerometer/gyroscope/compass) would have been helpful to diagnose this, but I couldn't find anything.

Does anyone know how to do any of the following:

Completely disable the sensor

Calibrate the sensor

Identify the location of the sensor or which board it's on so I can replace it (there are 3 other boards in addition to the MB)

Thanks in advance!