Needs to press the power button 5-6 times before laptop actually starts

[Bhadu]

Hi,
I have a MSI laptop MS-1451 which I bought 3 and half years ago.
Now the battery has completely gone....

For the past one month I have noted that before I get to work on the system(in AC).....it switches off....The longer I keep the laptop switched off , the no: of times I need to press the power button on to get it started is higher

i.e I have windows XP..
I press the power button...it switches on....then it can switch off any time between that point and the window logo appears
I keep on doing this and after sometime it actually starts and works without any problems thereafter and on restarting also it works fine.

Now 2 days back I completely reformatted the system and did a fresh installation of XP thinking it might be some virus..But it still happens...

Another curious point.....if I press the del option to get into BIOS/ if I press esc when the option "start windows normally option" appears......it doesn't switch off....and stands in that screen as long as I press save&exit/Enter.

Which made me think there is some component in the laptop which needs to charge before it gets started.Earlier the battery was there, so it was automatically charged now that battery is gone it is requiring time to get charged from AC till such times it won't start up and afterwards it works fine...Am I right in my thinking...If so which is this component?

My CMOS is fine for my system's date is fine.As battery costs are higher I am asking this...if I put new battery will the system work fine...or shall I just dump it...it is sad because otherwise it works absolutely fine

Bha

 

[C12Friedman]

I might venture here that it is possibly your CMOS battery (hearing aid/watch battery) on the motherboard which is going bad. According to the video I found (linked below) yours appears to be both easy and the standard CR2032 watch battery (you would need to confirm the battery size). You can simply check that battery to make sure it's supplying 3v, if so replacement isn't needed.
While you have the laptop open, I might suggest removing the heatsink/fan assembly (no further disassembly required to access that) and cleaning it then cleaning off and replacing the thermal compound and then reinstall the heatsink/fan
All you would need to do is covered in the first minute of this video http/www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2YicN16mIQ (except cleaning and replacing thermal compound - which can be found all over the web). It does not appear to be tricky at all.
Another issue which could cause that is worn/leaky capacitors but that would require removing the motherboard for inspection - I don't think I'll suggest that at this point.