Hi i was using my laptop the other day when it froze while browsing the internet, i rebooted but upon booting the HDD the light flickered 3 times and then nothing, Now i am having problems with the pc not booting at all, it won't go into the BIOS or anything. I bought a new HDD and tried that with a new copy of XP but no joy. It has let me into the BIOS about 2 times but froze after about 10 seconds i noticed the time and date are wrong, could that be a sign of a low CMOS battery? i have tried removing the RAM and cleaning and a few things to no avail.. the fan is working ok and the wireless light, power and battery light are illuminated as they should but the HDD light sometimes will flicker about 3 times then nothing and then sometimes nothing at all...

You need to eliminate the possibility of a bad component plugged into the motherboard. This means remove one memory module at a time, try both memory slots, remove the hard drive and any other components that you can like the cd-rom, wireless card, modem, etc.

Each time, try the laptop and see what the results are.