Rapid play/pause on HP Pavillion

[goodnightmomo]

Today, my laptop started to randomly play and pause in rapid succession as if I was spamming the F10 key (but far faster than my measly human fingers can produce).

• When this happens, the above picture pops up and then the play/pause button will flicker (as though I was hitting the F10 button)
• Cursor/mouse will flicker simultaneously
• While flickering, it actually pauses and plays the audio/video. Gives a stuttering sound as a result
• Using the F10 button still works; however, the flickering of play/pause will override me using the F10 key.
• I'm currently unable to use certain keyboard shortcuts like CTRL+T in Clip Studio Paint since this started happening
• Holding down the F10 key gets it to stop briefly
• Pressing the screenshot key gets it to stop briefly
• At first, it seemed like it was being triggered by my typing, like if I went to use CTRL+V or the arrow keys. No longer seems to be the case

Not sure if it's related, but before this, my audio kept fading out the days before if I didn't have headphones plugged in. Even at 100% volume on both PC and video, I could barely hear the audio.

My specs:

• HP Pavilion 17-cd1xxx
• OS: Windows 10 Home,  21H2
• OS Build: 19044.1826
• Using the latest version of Mozilla Firefox

What I've tried:

• Restarting PC (both selecting “restart” and “shut down” to reboot)
• Right-click troubleshoot (this uninstalled and reinstalled my audio driver, but to no avail)
• Running a full antivirus scan
• Attempt to update drivers (kept being told I was up-to-date)
• Command prompt to identify and repair corrupted files (and then reboot)
• Googling to find other means of resolving the issue

[GoodnightMonkey]

Okay, this is actually my post (above) but I finally figured out my old login. So, here I am!

Update:

I have attempted to reset the the computer today and that hasn't resolved my issue. I have no idea what to do. Finally called it quits and thought I'd go back to Amazon (where I bought my laptop from) with whom I have a 4 year warranty on my laptop for. They were like: "lol, you need to go talk to the manufacturer and then they can get back to us." Did that, but I've literally been navigating in loops for the last hour because my net is crap and doesn't want to load the HP page only to find that I can't actually get in touch with an agent if I have an expired manufacturer warranty unless I extend it or something...? I can't find an e-mail, I can't find a phone number, I can't find a chat service with a person. Finally found a phone number "thanks" to Amazon.

So, I'll be calling up HP tomorrow. I think that's all I can do at this point but I'm still open to possible solutions if anyone has anything.