Short answer: this is one sick (and unrepairable) laptop. I may give it one more try, but I will probably have to wait several months for the battery to discharge to take another run at it, as it crashes / shuts down repeatedly and won't even let me run another BIOS reset.
I suspect that the soldered-in motherboard RAM is toast.
On the other hand, now I remember why I will no longer buy HP computers.
