BIG laptop problems....presario 2500

I purchased a presario 2500 off of a guy the other day for $400,he said the hard drive was bad (didnt come with one).So I stuck a good 20gb hard drive in it and it was working,I was formatting and installing XP then it crashed.I felt some heat coming from it,laptop battery was scorching hot,pulled it out and it made a crackling noise,it was fully charged before I put it in and it was now drained (had the lappy plugged into the wall too).

So..now whenever I try to boot it,it freezes up after 10 seconds in the bios and after I reboot it it does absolutely nothing.I hear a tiny click coming from the CPU area (maybe the fan? Hard drive isnt in it).I have to wait like 2 hours before I can re-boot it,I can get into the bios but it freezes up after 10 seconds again..............

I have a 2nd battery that was fully charged...tryed booting it with just that.Battery didnt get hot but it was fully drained after 10 seconds.

Conclusion : I think the motherboard is on its way out.When I turn it on I hear a fan spin up but the one on the bottom of the laptop doesnt spin (maybe the intake fan).It blows hot air out though.

Anyone else have an opinion?

well I would say unless it was an AS IS sale I would talk to the guy you bought it from find out what happened to that laptop. if you can't get any satisfaction that way. pop it open and take a good long look over the HS on the CPU also look for internal damage.