it could be, but that wont stop the laptop from turning on, i can run mine completely without a battery, ive got a dell 1501, well something somewhere is thuroughly fukced up, i would imagine its the powersupply, and since you havent used it for a while the battery is dead as well, so its getting little to no power... thats my guess.. cause if it was something with the motherboard, the lights would flash in a pattern that you could look up as code and it would tell you whats wrong with the motherboard or with components inside the compueter