My dell inspiron 8500 will not start up properly, how can I fix it?

Tweet

Hi, I have a dell inspiron 8500 laptop. When I try to turn it on, the power light turns on and then the light for the cap lock will blink a couple of times. At other times, the laptop will actually start up and go to windows xp. However, once it enters windows, as soon as I try to do something the computer just completely freezes and I have to restart it (and the loop starts all over again) I know it can't be my RAM (I've already check it was in place properly and that it matches what my dell can use) and I've run the anti-virus program and anti-spyware programs. I figure something is wrong with my motherboard. Also my power cord has some loose wires, but I don't think it would cause this problem becuase I've already tried removing the battery and seeing if the laptop does turn on with the power cord plugged in ( and it does turn on), I also did t