Elderly Gateway laptop on but not booting

I have a an older Gateway laptop Model MX6956 that I am running Windows 7 on and was very reliable until this morning. It now does not boot up and the only activity I can see when restarting, often having to remove the battery to turn it off, is momentary cd rom activity and then an even quicker hard drive burst of activity. I removed the swappable cd rom and it shows only a second or so of having checked the hard drive. At least according to the light I see on the front. You can hear that it does spin the cd rom and I cannot actually hear the hard drive but I don't think I could have before. The fan is working as before and always. I turned it off for about an hour to completely cool down and when I try starting it up again I see the same symptoms. The only other event I can see is that there are two lights on the front. The power lights on the front are working as usual.

I have tried fiddling around with all the screen related Fn keys. What I am stumped by is why I am seeing absolutely nothing on the screen. Not even a flicker. I am thinking that it either is not getting to POST or if it is it is not getting very far on that. I don't think that it is a screen problem because I do not hear, or see, more than a few seconds of activity on the hard drive whereas if the pc was starting up (without the screen) I would see much more activity on both the cd ROM and the hard drive.

The battery is not in very good shape but it has been working. I can start it up on the battery and I see exactly the same thing. Is there a CMOS battery on a laptop as there is on a desktop that I might need to replace? I cannot think of any other reason it would at least not continue and/or finish the POST.

Thanks very much,
Jim Lee

 

To update troubleshooting.......
I have removed both of the 1gb memory sticks and when I try to boot it does the very same thing. No beeps. No notice that the memory is not there.
Also reseated the same very carefully.

Did some weird laptop power trick where I removed the battery, turned the pc off, pushed on the power button for at least 60s seconds, put the battery back in
and started up. Same thing. Also same after using AC adapter.

Connected to VGA monitor. Same same.

I am venturing to guess that I have a bad connection on my motherboard somewhere.
What do you all think?

To repeat the symptoms, a laptop that has been running perfectly now powers on but all that happens after that is the cd ROM gets touched for a second, then the hard drive lights for a second.....then nothing but the power lights and the normal fan noise.

Thanks,
Jim Lee