I have a Sony Vaio VGN-B100B that has not been booting up. It is plugged in (the battery is pretty much dead). I removed the battery and tried to boot up with just the power chord and I get nothing so the battery, as drained as it is, seems to act as some sort of jumper. Sometimes it will start to boot up and then I hear a little zap sound and it totally shuts down. Sometimes it shuts down immediately and other times it shuts down after about 30 seconds. And sometimes it boots up just fine. This has been going on for several weeks.

On a similar note - When I use wireless internet, oftentimes my computer will reboot itself over and over. Problem might be that I am picking up a neighbors wireless signal. But why would that cause my computer to continually shutdown and reboot? Is it some sort of wireless internet security tool? It happened at a hotel in NY but also happens in my apartment in SF.