What might be wrong

I bought a Dell laptop in a thrift store for $2. Yeah true. However, it seems to have a problem. I can hear you all say, "Well what can you expect from a thrift store." Well actually I have found other laptops in thrift stores (but for a lot more than $2) and got them working. This one is a Dell PP09L. Can anyone tell me anything about it? I looked online but it doesn't say much.
It didn't come with a hard drive. It has 2 gigs of RAM. Here is the problem:
I plug in the power cord and the charging light comes on so the battery is charging. Not sure if it'll hold a charge. I'm leaving it overnight. But the fact that the charging light is on is a fairly good sign. I press the power button and the 3 green lights come on and the power light. The screen looks like it's trying to come on. I can see it flash, then it goes off and the power light goes off. The charging light still stays on.
Will it do that if there is no hard drive in it? I'm looking for a spare HD. I don't want to buy one just to find out it won't work. Anyway, what do you think might be wrong?

 

No HD, therefore no OS. Borrow an HD from someone.

 

Reads like there's a motherboard fault somewhere if there's no Dell BIOS screen.

Some Dells have a reset sequence which might help, I'm not familiar with this model/range but maybe someone else might know what it is or be able to dig it up.

 

My DVD ROM can't read discs..
in device manager is says "It is working properly"
i upgraded the driver and it says "installed correctly"
but the same when i inserted a dvd disk i won't read..

 

please start a new thread for a new issue.

 

Does anyone have that sequence? I might repost that question if no replies on it.
Yeah I figured it might be a motherboard but I feel maybe it might be curable seeing as the screen does try to flash on, albeit a fraction of a second.
Yes I'll see if I can scrounge an old HD. Thought I had one somewhere.

It's a Dell Inspiron 990PL. Is that an XPS or something like that? Yeah there should be a BIOS screen.

 

Plodr, thank you. I agree it's perhaps not worth bothering with. I took out the HD from my normal Dell but it didn't help at all. So it's not the HD. Is the graphics chip the motherboards then? It does have a PCI chip in it. On the Dell site it said that it might be a piece of hardware that's causing the problem and suggesting taking everything out and re-inserting. The motherboard is hardware so it's probably that. I might be able to sell it for parts... on the other hand I can get more than my $2 back on the power supply which works. So thanks for you suggestions all.