I think I messed up

My friend forgot to bring over her power cable for her laptop. The battery was really low as the battery light was blinking and sounding, indicating a very low battery. I was going to backup her data. No problem, I told her I could do the backup by removing the hard drive and putting it into an external hd case and hooking it up to my tower. I removed the hard drive from the laptop did the backup and replaced the hard drive all without removing the laptop's battery. DOH! Now the thing won't boot at all and I don't have a power cable to test it with before I return it to her. I'm a little scared now. When I press the power button the power light (beside the battery light) blinks orange for a sec and then nothing. I pray I didn't fry the laptop and that it's just the battery being too dead to boot up the laptop. It's an Acer Aspire 5740. Any words of encouragement? I know, It was a dumb@ss thing to do without removing the battery..I just forgot. Prayin....

 

sounds like the battery is too drained to boot. i have done the same thing before with no problems. i got distracted and came back to the project thinking Ive already removed the battery only to find out that it was still installed:-o

 

Greetings, Sam Digity.

Agreed with larr - no need to panic. Just get the power cord (or find a substitute) and see what happens.

While not recommended, removing a laptop drive while the battery's still connected shouldn't damage anything, especially if the battery is drained to begin with.