Sad part is it's probably built onto the motherboard. I work on mac laptops at work quite a bit and that's how most of those are. So I suspect the hp's would be the same. Unless they are under warranty through hp, may be better off just getting a new laptop. PC laptops are probably not this bad, but I know a board for a mac laptop runs usually almost as much as the machine is worth. Between 350-800 or 900 bucks. However, some good news there are external hard drive enclosures available, you may be able to find one on newegg that will fit your laptop hard drive, use that via a usb cable with whatever computer you may buy if that's what you have to do, and still be able to save your files.