Dell XPS m1210 won't start up with battery or ac power all of a sudden

I suspect there's an error code at work here with the keyboard lights' sequence that I just don't know how to read and the manual does not help.

This morning I woke up and discovered my 1.5 year old Dell XPS M1210 laptop will not power up, even when directly plugged into the wall using AC power. I left it on overnight (as I've done many nights) and always plugged in; it should slip into sleep mode. When I opened the lid this morning all the display lights were on on the keyboard as if things were normal, but the screen was blank/black. I tried gently waking her up but to no avail (for what I knew to try at that particular moment) and ultimately forced it to power down in order to restart by holding the power button til everything shut down. After waiting for a bit, I tried powering up and this is what happened:

1. I hear something trying to start, (a slight high pitched "whir", like the beginning of a normal-sounding start-up), the central blue "power on" LED comes on as does the green "power" Device Status Light;
2. For a second or two initially, the Device Status light indicating when the computer reads or writes data comes on (the cylinder shape icon) but then goes out;
3. The Battery/charge light never comes on or flashes;
4. Of the Keyboard and Wireless Status lights-- the "9' light is on solid, while the "A" and "down-arrow" lights are flashing simultaneously (the others remain off)
5. After 20-30 seconds of this, the computer shuts completely down from this state

This is the repeating scenario for all my simple attempts so far at finding a solution. Meanwhile, I've checked the AC outlet (good) and the connection to the AC adapter (good as far as I can tell -- the light indicating the adapter is receiving power is on). Which leads me to guess it's a problem happening all of a sudden with the power connection at the computer itself (?). The battery should have had full charge but I took the battery out and followed one of Dell Support's online troubleshooting guides for no power & no POST but it did not give me any insight into reading the problem without having to contact their technicians directly for a fee.

With the battery out, there is still no indication the computer is receiving a charge to power up by the status light when I am using AC power only nor does it get much farther than the 20 or so seconds of slight noise and lights on the keyboard, BUT it is getting power in order to do this much.... I just wish I knew what it was telling me!

This is my first laptop and my secondary computer (I use a desktop PC primarily, but it's got malware issues I'm trying to resolve and temporarily out of commission making the laptop numero uno for the time being); I hope there is a new-user friendly solution. :-)

From other posts, many people seem to have similar issues with this generation of xps m1210, but I haven't found my exact symptoms posted yet outside of not booting up/charging/working off or recognizing ac power. I do not get any error messages other than that particular sequence of flashing lights could mean because it no longer boots up.

I am outside of warranty now and am hoping someone has a tiny bit of good news for me in fixing this problem.

Thanks for any help you can give~