Hello all,
I just recently went to use my laptop after a few months of sitting in a safe place, and upon attempting to turn it on it seemed to hit an error I can't seem to diagnose.
When booting up, I could hear the hard drive spin up, as well as the DVD drive. However, the DVD drive kept turning on repeatedly every few seconds like it wanted to load something, and the screen continued to stay black with the most faint hint of light as if the screen wanted to turn on too. Assuming it was a hard drive issue, I ordered an SSD and attempted again. Still, the DVD drive just keeps seeming to turn on, as if the computer is attempting to boot itself every couple seconds. I opened the DVD drive manually with the button, and then tried again, still nothing except for the screen faintly turning off and on again every couple seconds. Tapping delete, F11, escape, or any other button didn't change a thing and I can't seem to get to the BIOS whatsoever.
The laptop is an Asus X550JX:
Intel i7-4720HQ, Nvidia GTX 950M, 12GB DDR3 1600MHz ram, and now a 500 GB Samsung 860 Evo SSD.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Edit:
After replacing the internal button battery, trying different boot devices, tapping many different keys upon hitting the power button, and a handful of other troubleshooting attempts, I finally came to a conclusion.
After charging up the battery fully (confirmed by hardware light on the laptop) and being able to have the computer go through the same problems as AC power, I left it to sit for about 24 hours. When coming back, the battery appeared to be completely dead. Not only that but there was a high pitched tone coming from inside the laptop similar to that of a tube TV. As best as I can guess, there is a faulty capacitor or a regulator (like user Zm1TD guessed), which caused the abnormal battery drain and the startup process to occur about once a second after the power was turned on.
Solution: new laptop!