Dell XPS 1502 :: Won't Boot - Makes Single Click (close To DVD Player)

My Dell XPS L502 laptop is 1 year, 3 months old. It is 8G and came with an Intel Core i5-2430M 2.4GHz. My company is currently in a 24 month lease agreement with Dell. I went to turn the laptop on and it wouldn't turn on. I pressed the power button a few times and eventually it booted up and ran fine (in hindsight it may have been a little slower than usual but I had just downloaded a bunch of high resolution pictures so thought that could have been the issue).

I left my desk for lunch and upon my return, the laptop wouldn't come out of sleep mode - it was like it powered down on its own. I tried tturing it on again by pressing the power button but it wouldn't boot. Each time I pressed the power button, the light on the power button would flash and there would be a single click noise (the noise sounds like it is coming from the DVD player but I am unable to open the DVD player).

I took out the battery, put the battery back in - still wasn't able to turn the laptop on. I than took out the battery and just had it plugged into the outlet and after another 7 attempts of hitting the power button (and experiencing that single click with each push), the laptop booted successfully. I tried opening up a program (Quickbooks) to back it up and the computer froze (not responding to CTL+ALT+DEL) and eventually went into sleep mode. I haven't been able to get the computer to boot since. The keyboard does not light up but the little light in the middle of the power button does each time I press it, which is  always than accompanied by a single click noise, which is coming from the right side of the keyboard, close to the DVD player.