Laptop not posting

[Olly-]

A friend's asked me to have a look at his laptop which he said was showing an error along the lines of no operating system found. I through that would be a nice easy OS corruption or disk failure, however when he turned it on to show me the power light came on, but nothing else happened.

I've tried connecting an external monitor to the VGA port, again nothing appeared on the screen.

The Num or Caps Lock lights do not come on, either external USB keyboard or the laptop's built-in keyboard.

I've tried booting without HDD, CD, or memory in the laptop again nothing happens.

The laptop stills seems able to charge the battery as the charge light comes on, and the CD drive does spin up if a disk is in the drive.

It is an Acer Aspire 5536. Does anyone have any idea's or should I just call it dead?

[Detection]

Could be a RAM problem, try removing all bar one stick / trying a known good stick on its own

[Klownicle]

Aggreed, If its not ram that is causing the problem then theres something wrong with the motherboard. Usually if its a motherboard issue the laptop will power on but then off shortly after. What are the reactions of the fans when the unit is powered on? Do they start up fast then slow down, is it on constantly to where you can hear it?

[Olly-]

I've found the fault, the CMOS battery was completely flat, after changing it the laptop boots normally.