Acer Aspire laptop won't turn on

I know my first mistake was purchasing an Acer. Lesson learned! Now this morning I turned on the laptop, forgot about it and went out for a couple hours. When I got home it was in the BIOS set up. I had a hard time exiting. It wouldn't let me just exit. In case my kids touched anything I set the Bios back to previous setting and then it let me exit. Now it won't turn on. The battery is charged. The power light comes on, the disc drives does it's thing for a second and the fan kicks in, but that's all. The fan goes off and all is quiet with power light still on. This has happened before, but not for a long time and after trying to turn it on a couple of times it would. I've tried pulling the battery and power cord, holding the power button for a minute and even pressing the power button for a minute then replacing battery and power cord but still nothing. The model is an Acer Aspire 5734Z-4958. Any suggestions? Thanks.

How old is this laptop?

I bought it about 2.5 years ago

Try removing the hard drive and try booting...

Just tried and same response. Power light only. I was wondering where the little switch is that tells the laptop when the monitor is up or down. I can see a small plastic piece near the left hinge and wiggled that and also had no luck. Not sure if that is the switch or not.

That little switch just turns off the display. The laptop should still be running. The motherboard may have died

Is there anyway to confirm this? If it is the motherboard, I'm assuming it's probably better to get a new laptop vs. new motherboard?

Will attaching an external monitor show anything?

no nothing. the hard drive light doesn't even flicker which it normally does when it is booting up.

Has to be a bad motherboard... Motherboard around $200 plus labor

That sucks!

I appreciate the help Tmagic

Cheers