Laptop attempts to come on, lights come on, you

I have an HP laptop thats less than 1 year old. Today when I went to start it the lights would come on and you could hear the componets kick in (nothing unusual there) but then it would power down. The screen wouldnt even come on. Everytime I tried to start it, this would happen. I asked my boyfriend to check it and he looked it over then tried starting it by removing the battery. It worked. Any idea whats going on and how to fix this error?