I've got a Dell Inspiron 5150. I turned it on earlier and all that shows on the screen is a blinking _. There is no dell splashscreen, and when I insert a bootable Windows CD, nothing happens. The power light is green, no other lights are lit, no noises are made.

This was my first time turning it on in a few days. It was working fine on Sunday, when I last turned it on. At that point I set it to shut off and it froze (which is unusual), so I held the power button until it shut off. I'd not touched it since then assuming everything was fine.

The laptop runs exclusively off the battery, which is working fine. (This is perhaps incidental but I don't have an AC adapter, only an external battery charger.)

When I take the hard drive out I get the same blinking underscore. If I try taking the RAM out, the laptop turns on and then off after a few seconds, the monitor will not even turn on. Since that's the result when the RAM is out, I'm kind of thinking the RAM isn't the issue.

 

Could the BIOS have somehow been frazzed? (Although I was not updating the BIOS at the time.) If so, is there a way to fix it? I've been alternatively wondering if the CPU died.