Thanks, but unfortunately....

We did try all of the battery tricks. That was the first thing we tried. My laptop (that I'm using at the moment) pulled the battery/power cord trick last year. The battery is hosed and won't run the computer, and then the power cord got surged during a particularly nasty T-storm. $21 and I was up and running.

This is different. It died while running from wall power. Reseating the battery didn't do it. Running it with the AC power without the battery in didn't do it. Running it off the (full) battery without the AC power in didn't do it.

The really ominous thing is that it never attempted to spin the drive or turn on the fans......

Anyway, Dell support got back to me, and they say that the mother (f'ing) board is toast and that I'll need to replace it.

Other than taking the computer apart, how hard is that to do? Is it something that someone who is relatively ok with popping open the case is going to be ok doing? Or should I call a techie friend? Or should I send to Dell? I've put in cards etc. before, memory and all that, but in a tower, and I know how to take the case apart of the laptop to get to the motherboard, but I'm not sure whether I want to try it myself....

Any advice on that subject would be much appreciated.
Or on whether there's a way to troubleshoot the board and fix just whatever blew up.....