@Marilla
The second part of your comments is the most critical -- as we have no way whatsoever to assist you in removing a BIOS password. Not only is that against Community policies, we can not physically do it, nor can you, because it is encoded in the Firmware of the BIOS chip on the system board -- and neither we nor you have any way of altering that.
You should not have bought a used PC with a BIOS password, as the only HP recourse in this situation is to charge you the full cost of replacing the entire system board -- which is sure to cost much more than simply replacing the laptop.
You might be able to find a local laptop service facility that can help you with this -- but we can not assist in that in any way.
I am a volunteer and I do not work for, nor represent, HP