Laptop Is Acting Very Strange At Startup

[Randy121]

I bought the laptop as a certified refurbished unit from Amazon last year.  Peformance was initially extremely poor so I swapped out with a SSD after 3 months.  The SSD quit functioning after 6 months, so I swapped in another SSD.  I also had to replace the keyboard after 6 months because a number of keys just stopped working (not an easy task anymore).

Despite all this, the latop would usually boot up in under ten seconds.  About a week ago, it would simply not respond when hitting the power button, other than the CPU fan would come on and blow very hard for ten seconds, then I would get a screen flash, then back to blank.  After this the fan would quiet down and the computer would just sit there with a black screen and screen flash about once per minute.  After 5 or 6 minutes, it seems to finally start up.  I have run all the HP diagnostics including the long test.  Everything comes back normal.  I attempted to boot into diagnostic mode by hitting the escape key during this strange startup and cannot get any response from the computer.  I have unplugged the power and also pulled the battery.   

I am suspecting my motherboard might be on the way out?  This laptop is very lightly used as a home shopping, surfing laptop.  Any help on this would be great.  Thanks. 

[WAWood · Accepted solution]

@Randy121

Sorry, but we're not HP Tech Support and there is nothing we can do from here to perform diagnostics on your PC.

From your description, it sounds like the motherboard is failing, but we have no way to test for that.

Buying a refurbished unit is always a gamble, and it looks like you got the short end of the deal.

I buy my refurbished units always from the same place -- the local branch of a national PC supply store -- as they provide a 90-day no questions asked full refund policy.