Startup failure

New Member on this forum!
Just acquired a used Acer laptop Travelmate 280.
It had difficulty to start but every now and than it would start. I found the battery dead so suspected that to be the problem. I ordered a new battery (deliver one week) and in the mean time this laptop would not start at all anymore. When the new battery arrived it proved that the battery was not the reason why it did not start.
When I press the start button the internal fan starts and that is all that happens.
Any one out there knows about the soft start button and any internal battery other than the main battery?

 

the bios battery but, i would hook it up to an external monitor to make sure it's not that screen, it could be the gfx card too, my acer would boot up in to the OS but, with a black screen due to a faulty gfx card.

could also be bad ram the HDD or motherboard thats why you need to trouble shoot it.

 

CdoubleJJ,
Thanks. As I do not hear any HDD action I presume gfx not the problem. If bios battery is bad it would start with factory defaults is not it? In ancient times I had a small notebook that wanted 3 batteries (main, bios and a button cel for the soft start key). The button cel was not documented. I think I start dis-assembling this machine to find out!
Fred