What do I do with a dead Dell ?

Since you are over a year old your onsite warranty is most likely expired as well as your total warranty depending on how many years you opted for. So if you are willing to try and fix  this yourself we can sure give it a go in helping you troubleshoot the system. If not then a local shop would be the better choice.

We could start by looking at your power button light. You say it lights, is it a solid light or is flashing? and what color is it?

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Power button is solid white. Also when I open the dvd it keeps going in and out, will not stay out long enough to put a cd in.

Problem is I can't get to the Dell splash screen or the Windows one so I can't trouble shoot anything. Last time I was able to get it to work (last Saturday) I made it go back to a week before just in case I had done something wrong. Got to back some stuff up and ran checkdsk and left it on for the night. Got up the next morning and my screen saver had frozen. Shut down and tried to restart and nothing. Haven't been able to get it to work since then.  

My relative's Dimension 5150 started acting up (after six years of ownership) ... my suspicion was the power supply, and so it was. A new one (non-Dell) was $30, but it also needed a right angle SATA adapter, which was a few dollars more. In any event, a PC that was on the verge of recycling is back in use for a few more years.

The power supply would be the first item I'd check; in the last six months, I've fixed two different computers, both with "freezing" problems, by replacing their power supplies with aftermarket Cooler Master units. One was a generic, and the other a Dell 5150. In the first case, it took me three days of troubleshooting before I found the issue; I changed the video card first, then the hard drive, and finally the power supply (after which it was fine).

Would the power supply work some stuff and not other? I do have power to the fans, lights, dvd drive. I would think if a ps went bad that it wouldn't work anything. I would like and probably can trouble shoot this myself,  I'm just not sure where to start. If I can't get into the setup or even get close to booting up what do I start changing first? I know how to replace everything just don't want to replace everything but what I need to. Why would the power supply make the machine not go to the CMOS? I should be able to get into that no matter what shouldn't I? Any reason for me to replace the button battery on the motherboard?

Yes, it could work some components and not others. For example, the generic machine I had booted up but would freeze after a few minutes; I eventually tried reinstalling Windows but the install proceeded abnormally slowly. The relative's machine would BSOD on bootup sometimes, while other times it would successfully boot up only to freeze shortly afterwards.

If the power supply is exceptionally flaky, the machine won't boot at all, even to the BIOS. Of course, there are other problems that could cause this, but the power supply (in my experience) is one of the first things to check.

As for the button battery, I've never replaced one of those and I've never had a machine fail to boot because of it (and I have a whole collection of PCs).