If the compute froze first, and than you took out the battery, the battery might be source of the problem. You might have taken the battery out at the wrong moment, maybe doing something as preventing the fan form working or soemthing which caued it to heat up and fry he ocmuter. If anything, I would first call for tech support and than get hte battery, cause an 89 cents call is a lot cheaper than 100 bucks.