Satellite L640 hangs at boot screen

Hi all,
I have an L640/01H which I bought at the beginning of this year. Besides the original Windows 7 OS, I installed a Linux system on a separate partition.
Earlier today I was using the Linux (which is what I normally use) and everything was really slow.
Eventually I force-shut-down using the power button.
Now, I've noticed an issue with the BIOS on this laptop - if I attempt to boot up when there is a USB flash drive plugged in, the boot screen just hangs. Today when I rebooted I realized that I had left a flash drive in, so I took it out and tried to boot again, a couple of times. Each time the computer would just hang indefinitely on the boot splash screen.
Eventually I gave it enough time and it got to the Linux boot selection menu, then I tried to boot my usual kernel but it gave me some message about a bad MBR.
I kept trying to boot but the boot process is stuck, what happens is as follows:
*The three lights on the left (power, battery and on light) come on, no problem
* The HDD light flashes white for a couple of seconds, then goes off. Occasionally it flashes again.
* Meanwhile the screen is just stuck on the boot splash screen. If I try to press f2, f12 or any key too many times it will start emitting beeps every time I press it. There's no way to get into the BIOS settings.
I also cannot boot from CD (Windows recovery CD or Linux liveCDs). Eventually some sort of time-out comes into effect and the computer restarts itself to begin the process all over again. Yay!
I tried the "unplug power cord, remove battery, hold down power button, plug back in, try to start" trick but nothing changed. I also tried switching memory slots (only one RAM chip, so I can't try an elimination process on the RAM).
Finally, I also opened up the HDD compartment and removed the HDD, then tried to boot. This time the BIOS responded, if only to tell me that there was no suitable boot media. At this point the BIOS was responsive and I could change settings in it, but I still couldn't boot from CD.
I was thinking of trying to reset the CMOS battery but I'm worried I'll damage something/make the problem worse. Does anyone have any ideas? I know the thing is still under warranty, but service centres are often slow and I don't want to lose hard drive data.
Any help would really be appreciated.

> Finally, I also opened up the HDD compartment and removed the HDD, then tried to boot. This time the BIOS responded, if only to tell me that there was no suitable boot media. At this point the BIOS was responsive and I could change settings in it, but I still couldn't boot from CD.
It could be a problem with CD/DVD drive what do you think about this idea?
Possibly the BIOS cannot recognize the CD/DVD drive properly and therefore there is a problem booting up from the bootable disk.
Additionally it could be possible that the HDD malfunctions and therefore you have received error message concerning MBR (master boot record) .
Remove the CD/DVD drive and try to install the Windows booting from USB flash drive.
_Regarding the CMOS battery:_
I would not recommend to disassemble the notebook because you could damage other parts and additionally you have to know that the CMOS battery is not removable its soldered on mobo

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Quote
Originally posted by Jocko
Hi
OK, just check, that HDD cable is OK, blue end to mobo, disk on end, no bent pins on disk, no bent pins on mobo, change molex connectors for disk. Sounds like a connection, if it is getting better. If it is disk try it on cable select. If you have another 80 wire cable try that, it not impossible a wire is broken (quite common, and causes intermittent failure), apart from that !
No USB devices plugged in?
cheers
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