My HP Pavillion a6620f is stuck on the Blue HP screen, F keys won't work

Question

My HP Pavilion a6620f is stuck on the blue HP screen. None of the suggested F keys will work. If I press Esc or F10, I get a message stating that it's starting up whatever corresponds to those keys, but nothing ever happens (left it for five hours while ran errands and it never changed.)
Previous to getting the blue screen, I had put the computer in sleep mode by choosing sleep through the start menu. When I came back to the computer the next morning, I'd forgotten that I'd put it in sleep, so I pressed the power button to turn it on; when it came on, it stayed on the blue HP screen. Since then, I've looked at the HP boards, I've taken off the side, vacuumed (lightly) out the dust, unplugged and plugged in the power cable from the hard drive and the mother board, then did the same with the data cable. I plugged everything back in and I'm still getting the blue screen. I don't have a recovery CD, so I don't know what else to do. Can someone help?

Answer 1

Hey McLundin, 
I'm sorry you're running into this issue with the blue screen. Is this screen one of the infamous blue screens of death?
Examples of BSODs
Do you get any sort of error message on the screen? Look for the word STOP and the code after that. If you need to, you can take a picture of it and post the picture in your reply.
I would suggest trying a hard reset as the next quickest and less invasive step. This can sometimes fix strange issues because it drains all of the electricity out of the unit. Here are the steps for a Hard Reset.
If you've got another laptop you can put the hard drive in, you can take the hard drive from the laptop in question and put it in a second laptop to see if it boots. Obviously, if you get the same screen it's a hard drive issue. My bet though, is that it will work, since the F keys on the affected laptop are not even working. (You're pressing those keys immediately on power on right?) Putting the hard drive into the second computer will allow you to back up files, if necessary, to a flash drive or external hard drive. 
I hope this information helps. Let me know what the results are, if you get a chance please