Compaq Armada m700 power issues

The PC was brought to me in need of an AC adapter. It powered on and ran from the battery just fine. I plugged in an AC adapter and the PC powered up but the owner turned it off during the post (the big red Compaq logo) saying he didn't know if it was the cahrger or the battery powering the PC. So, we removed the battery and plugged the AC adapter back in: nothing. We put the battery back in: nothing. Tried it with the battery alone: nothing (and it was running on the battery alone 5 minutes before). I eventually got it to power on with the AC adapter only and the battery removed. This model of laptop has a blue power on button and a power slider also. I held both the power button down and the power slider over for about 60 seconds with the battery removed and the AC adapter removed and this is what got the PC turning on again. When the battery is in and the AC is plugged in, the power LED (green) and the charging LED (orange) on the front just start flashing. If I hold the power button down and move the slider over, both LEDs go dark until the slider is released, then they start flashing.

What caused this? How do we get the battery to work again? It's about 2 years old and has a full charge (it has a built-in LED charge indicator and all five light up). Could the AC adapter have fried the battery? The PC runs fine on the AC only with the battery removed, but the first time I powered it up with both the battery and AC adapter, it worked fine.....
:banghead :cry :confused :mad :crybaby :boxing
The owner of the laptop is implying that I fried the battery but I don't see how that's possible. I've done the exact same things on dozens of other laptops and never had this problem before.

 

It seems to me what ever damage was done was done by the owner who stupidly turned off the laptop while it was posting!

 

Since I can't edit my post...I guess it takes me too long to search and get my thoughts together!
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/10382_na/10382_na.HTML#StandardFeatures
the button on the right is power. The button on the left is suspend. You might be putting it into hibernation. (On my HP, I have a slider and a hibernation button. I have standby and hibernation turned off so both the slider and the button will act as an on/off button. Check the BIOS and turn of standby and hibernation then try each independently and see what you get.

 

Can you try a Voltage Meter to test the battery to note of any output?

Also have a look at the connections on the battery are they clean.

 

The battery has a built-in charge indicator with 5 LEDs and all of 'em light up. The contacts are too small to get a voltmeter in there but I guess I could get creative if needed....

Yup. The contacts on the laptop are clean too.

I agree, but in a retail type of setting, you can't really point fingers and say "Hey you dumba*s!!! Don't stick your hands in where I'm working!!!!". It is his laptop and figured 'do what you want' but when he said "I dunno if it's running off the charger or not, lets shut it off and start again without the battery" I did say to him "let it boot to Windows and we'll shut it down normally" to this his response was "nahhh, it'll take too long... it'll be OK" and he hit the power button. I was kind of bewildered when he started implying that I had damaged something, when the last time the PC powered on normally was right before he touched it, but we can't accuse customers of stupidity....

This has been happening to me a lot lately too. Sometimes it takes a bit of time to research something and get everything together, and sometimes we need to edit a post 2, 3, 4 times.... I think MG has shortened the edit time or something.....