@mathlover Try hitting F2 or F9 at power-up. It should enter into Bios and allow you to list the hardware. Simply exit then, without changes. If that happens, most likely it’s an Ubuntu update that broke the bootloader. Otherwise it may be a hardware fault. If at boot it beeps a number of times, then it’s a hardware fault. You could google “hp N beeps at startup”, you can find what it means.
@luci Hitting F2 does nothing. Neither does hitting F9. No beeps occur
@mathlover F3? F10? Sorry, it’s usually one of these four for most laptops. You could look at HP support site, trying to find the exact info for your hardware, but that takes more time…
@luci It's a desktop, and I have already tried every function key
@luci Since the computer is literally 12 years old and has been powered on for most of that time, I am preparing to replace it. This is more a last ditch effort to salvage a beloved possession then anything