Laptop resuscitated!

With the help of the AGW hive-mind, I diagnosed the problem with my laptop. The battery was dead.

Wall juice comes into the laptop through the cord and is routed through the battery if it's installed. A dead battery dams those electrons and not enough get through to power the screen or wireless card.

When I removed the battery, the wall juice followed a different path, and the laptop powered up normally.

Now all I've got to do is buy a replacement battery. That'll run me $70 or so on eBay.