Dell inspiron does not start

Hello,

My dell inspiron does not start up. The boot sequence is not initialised so i guess no probs with the OS.

the foirst time I power the laptop, the HD light goes on, power light goes on but the screen is blank. its not booting. I do a power shut down and then try starting it again.

THE LAPTOP FINALLY BOOTS and runs like nothing has ever happened after 6 or 7 above mentioned attempts to turn it on.

My CMOS battery on the motherboard is low. I need to set the time everytime I boot. I was losing time on the clock gradually and since a week, the time is totally lost. I am guessing that this is the problem. Can anybody who knows laptops or pc's well confirm with this?

I ask this, because based on what I have seen in other forums, I do not get any CMOS failure or other such msges that indicate the CMOS batery bieng low.

Thanks a ton for reading this.

waiting for your replies