Thinkpad laptop problem

This is a friends laptop and I can't figure out what the problem is.
The situation is that he let the laptop battery die while it was running. He let it sit over night plugged the laptop into the wall and tried to boot it up. He hear's noise going on inside the computer ( in other words the hard drive is running) and the screen is a gray colour (Basily there is power going to hte screen but no visual to see). When he pushes key's on the keyboard on the laptop each key makes a beeping noise.

I made sure he tried booting without the battery, with the battery but no plug in, made sure that laptop wasn't set to be using a projector. It is an older thinkpad but still in great condition.