HP Pavilion dv7 Freezing on Boot

[AspectX]

Model: dv7-2270us

Worked beautifully, and one day, just went to a blank screen with a cursor in the top left of the screen. I cannot get it past any of the startup diagnostics (either from the ESC menu or from within the BIOS). I thought perhaps the HDD was the culprit, so I purchased a new HDD for it, and identical issue. Cant be software, not getting that far. I reseated and checked the memory in another similar system, and the memory checks fine. I have put both the old and the new HDD's in another system, both read/write just fine, are able to be partitioned, formatted, etc. At this point, I am at a loss as to the problem. Any wisdom on this subject would be hugely appreciated.

p.s. I cant do software diagnostics because I cant keep the system out of a frozen state long enough to get to any software lol

 

[popatim]

Those I believe had Nvidia graphics chips that could get very hot and eventually lose connection to the motherbd, requiring a reflow for them to become operational again. I dont know if this is something you want to attempt.