Presario CQ62 hangs at orange screen instead of booting Windows

[Telkwa]

We're visiting Panama.  I'm trying to help a person who lives here.  I'm not sure if this laptop is a US model or Central American.

It's a CQ62-219WM.  Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit.

The owner said it's been running slower and slower.  With a Celeron 900 and 2 GB of RAM it was never a screamer.  I fired it up.  Yeah, it's really slow.

I suggested wiping it clean and doing a recovery off the hard drive partition.  I wanted to make DVD's but all we had was DVD-RW's.  So I did the recovery straight from the HDD.

Immediately after the recovery I installed Windows Defender, Firefox, and Chrome, then started Windows Update.  After the second round of Windows Updates the laptop hung at an orange screen with the Compaq "C" icon.  In the lower left corner there was some text.  "Press ESC for Startup Options" I think it was.  I pressed Esc.  The text changed to "Esc...Pause Startup".  And there it sat for 20 minutes.  When I nudged the power button it shut down immediately.

The orange screen seems to be some sort of odd boot layer that HP created, because I don't get a response from any of the typical F keys during startup.  It seems BIOS, Boot Menu, etc. are all hidden behind the orange screen.

After a few hours of screwing around with it, here's what I have:

If the laptop is on AC and battery:

Using Windows "Shutdown", then pressing the "on" button - hangs at the orange screen of death (OSOD)

Using Windows "Restart", it restarts without hanging so it's OK

If it's on AC with battery removed:

Windows "Shutdown", then the "on" button - OK

Windows "Restart" - OK

If it's on the battery only, unplugged from the AC power adapter:

Using Windows "Shutdown", then the "on" button - OSOD

Using Windows "Restart" - OK

Does this make any sense to anyone?  The battery is an Anker, some aftermarket brand I've never heard of.  I'm almost thinking there's something wrong with the "on" button, but the lappy starts OK on AC with no battery. 

The only combination that consistently causes the OSOD is 1) battery plugged in to the chassis, and 2) Windows Shutdown (and then the "on" button) instead of Windows Restart.

Access to RAM, wi-fi, and HDD is easy so I checked those connections and re-seated the RAM.  Blasted some compressed air through the fan vents.  It doesn't seem to be clogged with lint AFAICT.

[Telkwa]

More on this although I don't know what it means.

Installed the latest BIOS (version 37, laptop had v. 7) and thought that might have fixed it.

Nope.

With no battery and no HDD, it goes past the orange screen and says "No Boot Device".  As it should.  Turn it off, turn it back on, over & over, same results.

With no battery and a Mint USB thumb drive, it goes past the orange screen of Death (OSOD) and starts to boot the thumb drive.

No battery and the HDD with MInt installed, it boots Mint.

No battery and the original Windows drive, it boots Windows.

With a battery in, (doesn't matter which one; the owner has a couple of spares) it goes to the OSOD and stays there.  Doesn't matter if there's no HDD, Mint, Windows, or the thumb drive.

In other words, it won't boot with a battery.  It will boot w/out a battery. 

With a battery plugged in it won't Start back up from the physical "On" button after a Windows shutdown.  But it will Restart from the Windows "Restart". 

This is weird.  It was running Mint 17 from the thumb drive.  I asked it to Quit.  With the laptop off I plugged in a battery.  Hit the "On" button, laptop hangs at the OSOD.

[Telkwa]

Found out about the HP Startup Test. 

Ran test with one of the owner's aftermarket extra capacity batteries.  These are physically larger than the original.  The test stalled at 17 sec. remaining, test 98% finished.  The last part of the test is the battery test.  The previous tests (memory, SMART, DST) passed.

Waited half an hour.  Gave up and turned it off.  Tried second aftermarket battery.  The test stalled at 15 sec. remaining, 98% finished.

Finally ran the original HP battery.  Same results.  Test stalls at 15 seconds, 98%.

I think something's gone haywire with the electronics that manage the battery.