potential bios issue?

Although I spend a fair amount of time working with setting up and making repairs to computers both at work(desktops & servers) and at home(lately mostly laptops) and most of these are always dells, I have never claimed to be proficient at it.  I have been experiencing an issue that I have not come across in any of my experiences or my seemingly endlless searches of late.  My machine is a Dell 1721 laptop running windows vista.  The issue (i believe) seems to have to do with bios loading the hardware.  I have a no post no video no boot scenerio happening which i believe is being caused by a power event related to a less than perfect battery fit issue.  It seems that although i have only had this computer for about 4 or 5 months, i have experienced a recurrent problem that happens when the battery is being slid into it's socket.  If it is just slightly out of  square with the machine, the second terminal on the computer from the direction of the start button grabs the wrong socket on the battery, and folds over and makes itself common with the number one pin (physically so).  The first time this happened I noted the pin configuration being out of kilter and bent the number two pin back into place.  After doing so, i had a issue where the laptop would not make any attempt to boot, the capital letters LED  between the power button and the home button would just sit there and blink for about 30 seconds after applying power and then just shut down all together.  With numerous unsuccessful attemts of everything i could imagine not having any affect, i took the laptop to a number of people who should know a lot more about it than i do and asked their advice.  one of the contacts told me the mother board was shot and i would have to deal with dell to complete repairs; the other said that she had no clue, and i should turn it over to dell as well.  Well, it is under warranty, but i suppose i felt a little guilty about doing that as i felt like the biggest idiot to walk the face of the earth because i had never heard of anyone dumb enough to fail at installing a battery, and with the main duties i typically do, this event was just totally out of my nature (believe it or not)/  So the laptop sat in the case with no battery in it behind the seat of my truck for about a week, when i finally could not stand being at home with out it any more i decided to bring it in and figure out what i was going to have to do to get it up and running again.  I sat down in my favorite chair and plugged in the battery just for kicks.  Much to my suprise the blooming thing started right up like nothing had ever been wrong in the first place.  Finally something seemed to make some sense to me.  With the battery being out for such a long period of time, I could only assume that the bios had had an oppertunity to drain and reset to some degree.  The only problem I had with this thought was that i had not made any effort to take the on board battery out of the picture, and I would think that that alone would prevent the reset that I had assumed had occured to remedy the problem. 

Well, i guess i must be more ignorant than i previously thought because the same battery issue happened to me again this morning.  but I examined the system and identified the reason for the recurrent problem was a small plastic divider on the battery was missing and it makes it easy for the pin on the computer to end up in the wrong place!  but now I have the no post situation once again.  I really did not want to leave the puter off for another week or two before i use it again, so i unplugged the battery and the on board battery and after leaving it alone for about 9 hours attempted to fire it up again.  unfortunately,  it still refused to boot. 

I guess i have just a couple of other questions:  first, has anyone ever heard of the battery issue i described, and second is the bios the likely culprit for the scenerio described above, and if so is there something else i can do in order to speed up my repair process (if it will even work again)?  OH YEAAH--the only reason i pulled the battery in the first place was that i purchased 2-2 gig memory modules FROM DELL to upgrade the memory.  As always, when i replaced the memory, i used static wrist bracelets and pads and EVERY precaution possible that i have learned in the last 20 years to avoid any problems.  I know i did not cause it, but the memory did not allow the couputer to boot with out a blue screen saying it couldnt wright to specific addresses.  the second time i pulled the battery was because i just couldnt believe that dell would have sent me bad memory--so i had to try it again--i here i am trying to tell you i am really not an idiot! oh well.  the puter sees the 4 gigs, but shortly after i start playing, i get blue screened showing unable to write to ceartan addresses.  Is there anything i might be un informed  about in this area?  any and all assistance would be greatly appreciated, Thanks, Bruce.    Why is it that i can work on everyone elses  multimillion dollar systems without avail, but with mine all bets are off!