Originally Posted by SecretMethod70

UPDATE: Sure enough, resetting the CMOS didn't work. Right after I finished trying that, I got my followup call from HP tech support. This lady was barely more helpful than the first (and equally difficult to understand), but I made some progress. After trying three different times to get through to her what the problem was (at one point, she offered to send me recovery discs... which might be useful if the computer would boot!), she finally offered to send me a box so I can send it in for repair. This time, there was no mention of "your warranty is expired" or "this will cost $300+," and my confirmation e-mail for the customer service order says the warranty status is "in warranty" and that the charge for this (so far at least) is $0.00. So, I'll send it in and see if they fix it for free, and if I get a call from someone telling me it will cost money then I'll be ready to complain.

She suggested that I take the laptop to Staples or Best Buy and have them back up my data before sending it in, which is a good idea... not because I can think of any reason they'd need to format the hard drives in order to fix the BIOS, but because I don't trust that they'll be smart enough to do it without also formatting the drives anyway! Of course, I also don't trust Best Buy not to create backups of my data for themselves, so I guess we'll see how Staples is, unless someone has any other suggestions.

Actually, maybe I'll just do the backup myself now that I have the laptop manual. I'm certainly at least as knowledgeable as the friggin' Geek Squad.