Desperate, old laptop won't startup

[astroview]

IBM Thinkpad 365x, bought it from company after the lease on it ran out. I have had it for 2 months now, and it was working.

Pentium 133
40 MB of RAM
2 GB HD

I was formatting the HD to get rid of linux to install Win98. I had partitioned, but then it got late, and I decided to finish the install the next day. I had finished partitioning to one 2 GB FAT32 partition. The next day the computer won't start, no lights or anything, unless I open it manually, and press the power button down. I think the power button may not be seated properly. But after it starts up, then it turns off automatically, which it shouldn't do, because the power button doesn't need to be pressed down after turning on the machine. I am pretty sure this is a hardware problem. Please help!

Could it be a bad HD? Its hard to muck around in a laptop, please keep that in mind. I kind of need the laptop for class soon too.

Thanks in advance.

 

[PCAddict]

Take the battery out and try running it on straight A/C power. A friend of mine has a 365XD and I seem to always be reloading/fixing it. One time it did the same thing you describe, and it was because the battery was toast. I don't know if it had a short or what, but the thing wouldn't even work on A/C power if the battery was installed.

 

[astroview]

Theres signs of life if theres no battery inside and its on AC, but still, its dead. When I power it on there's flicker of lights, but no startup. I think the computer is still OK because when I got it started 2 hours ago it started booting Tom's Root Boot disk ok.

 

[astroview]

bump