Need help with a laptop.?

ok, so my mom has an old hp laptop with crappy everything but one day she wanted to get on and the screen wouldn't turn on. so the genius that i am tried hooking up our tv to the laptop and still no display on the com or tv. and the computer start up light on the button for a couple of seconds and then it restarts again. if you could give your opinion on the mess that is going on it would be great. im studying networking so i can understand all of the terminology.