I have an old Dell Latitude C600 that I suspect has a faulty battery. The laptop has been sitting unused for a year now and last night I turned it on, formtatted it and reinstalled the OS and office etc. All was working fine. This morning though it will not boot. Its on AC power but the battery light flashes once so I don't think its charging it. If I press the power button every half second then it does boot but only as far as the 'dell' bios screen and then it hangs.

Is this a faulty battery? I know some laptops require a working battery to work at all but is the C600 one of them? I don't really want to spend £40-£80 on a battery to discover its not the problem.

I swapped the battery for that of a Dell Inspiron of similar age (this battery also dead by the way) and the Inspiron boots with the Latitude battery but not the other way around. Maybe the Inspiron doesn't need a good battery to function?

Any thoughts on what the issue can be? I was going to give this laptop away to someone today but I don't want them getting something thats going to break or be unreliable.