Computer won't Boot.. please Help!

Hi, I'm having a problem with my computer booting. A little background in case it's needed…. I was using my laptop when I noticed that it had froze up on me. I manually powered down by pressing the power button down for about 10 seconds. It shut down and restarted.. but nothing happened. It came on like it was going to boot, but I didn't see the disk light activitity come on, and I couldn't hear the computer trying to boot either. All I got was a blank screen. I kept manually shutting down and restarting, but I would get the same thing, just a blank screen. I disconnected everything connected to the laptop thinking that might help, but it didn't. I finally disconnected the power adaptor, restarted and it seemed to boot up and I got the Windows XP screen to come half-way up, and the status load bar.. it froze up at 2 bars. I re-booted again, but didnt get the XP screen, only a blank screen again. A few minutes before I noticed my computer froze, I had typed a wrong address into explorer, and I then got that pop up asking if I wanted to set Netster as my homepage (I clicked "no"). I was able to navigate to the page I wanted after that, so I don't know if that would have any impact on what happened. Anyone have any ideas as to what the problem might be? And more importantly, what I can do to get my computer to boot? Again, I get no messages at all when trying to load, error or otherwise.. just a blank screen.

Could be any number of things, so I am going to start with what may seem to be stupid questions.. The battery.. its charged up? Can you get to BIOS? and finally.. check that the fan in the back of it is blowing. Post back and let us know.