Keys on keyboard stopped working

[KevinC88]

I have a Pavilion 15t-cs200 laptop I bought just over a year ago in December of 2019.  Today a group of keys on the keyboard suddenly stopped working (of course now that I'm about 1mo out of warranty!).  The keys are all adjacent to each other.  The keys not working are 6,7,8, Y, U, I, H, J, K, N, M, and ",".  I ran a system component test and those keys failed in the keyboard test.  Tried updating the keyboard driver but it was up to date. I uninstalled/reinstalled the keyboard driver and restarted the computer with no success.  I ultimately tried an external keyboard and that works fine, so obviously it's a hardware issue with the internal keyboard.

Needless to say I'm pretty disappointed.  I paid a good amount for this laptop and spec ordered it through HP.  I thought I was making a good investment on a laptop that would last me a while.  Now, just over a year later the laptop is basically unusable, unless I carry an external laptop around.

Because it's out of warranty I can't even talk to someone at HP, their support chat won't let me.  I did some research and couldn't find any info on replacing the keyboard myself.  I pulled the bottom of the case off and took a look.  It looks pretty complicated to replace the keyboard.  I'm not super experienced, but from what I could tell it looks like all the other internals have to come out to get to the keyboard.

I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction on repairing this.  I'm really disappointed in the quality, I expected more out of HP. 

[WAWood]

@KevinC88 

You've discovered an unfortunate side-effect of the newer laptops -- to replace something as simple as as keyboard, you basically have to take the whole thing apart.   My older HP laptop only required removing four screws to accomplish the same.

It's a nightmare to do what needs to be done, and to be safe, you really have no choice other than to pay a repair technician to do the work, as tackling it yourself risks major damage.

This is the downside of the newer-and-lighter approach to laptops -- like the newer cellphones, repairing them is a nightmare.