Windows 7 - Hp Pavilion stops at Hp Logo Screen

Similar to my other thread in the hardware section, I have a friend who has an HP Pavilion dv9700t laptop, with Windows 7 Pro x64 installed. The laptop has been working fine until recently, when a curious irregularity has started happening. The laptop will start up fine, but when it first boots up, it will hit the HP Invent logo screen, revealing all the startup key options, such as F1 to enter setup, F2 for system info, etc. The laptop will just sit there on the HP screen, until any key is pressed, then it will continue the boot sequence and load Windows normally. I can enter the BIOS normally, and access any of the startup options normally. It's just that the laptop used to boot past the HP screen without intervention, and now it won't without a key press. I've checked all the settings in the BIOS, and I've even flashed it to a more recent version, but no luck. I don't know what caused it, because it has just started happening recently, and there doesn't appear to be any reason for it. Could it possibly be a hardware issue? Would I need to check the drive for errors, or is it a problem within Windows?

Hooray! Great news! I figured out what was causing the problems. It turns out that my friend had broken off one of the laptop keys, and in an attempt to get it to remain on the laptop, glued it back on to the keyboard, without telling me. I discovered this when I opened Wordpad to write some notes, only to find the 9 key displaying in an active line, like this: 99999999999999999

The key had been glued so firmly that it was permanently pressing as though someone were holding it down. As a result, the trackpad wouldn't scroll (as the 9 key also doubled as the right arrow key) and the BIOS would remain stuck on the initial boot screen until another key was pressed.

After removing the key, I scraped the dried glue off of it, reattached the plastic switch to the metal brackets on the keyboard so it snapped firmly back into place, and sternly lectured my friend about why superglue and keyboards do not mix.