Alright, so Im not too knowledgable about the hardware side of things - more into the software side of things.
Ive got an HP DV2000 laptop that I bought last year that seems to be wanting a rest now. I was using it this morning with no ill-effects. Grabbed a bite to eat, came back - and nothing. I had hibernated it as usuall when I got up, and when I came back the power light was on, all the blue lights under the volume buttons and such were lit up, but the harddrive was not spinning and the fans were off. Not too strange - since it was hibernating, but nothing seemed to wake it up. So after a while I gave up and turned it off, waited 5 minutes or so for good measure, and turned it back on. This time the hardrive seemed to make an effort - spinning for about a half second or so, then shutting off. Admittidly I have not tried to troubleshoot it too much on my own, out of fear of making things worse, so I figured I'd see what people with more experience in the area would reccomend. Thanks for the help!

disconnect the battery, HDD and cdrom from the laptop and turn on the notebook.