Battery completely shot, will that kill the laptop

[vilasman]

My battery is completely dead. It won't take a charge at all. Will the dead battery make the laptop not work? To put it another way. I can turn the laptop on. It will stay on for between 1 min and maybe 15 mins and then the trackpad freeze's up and the computer wont do anything.
If I restart it will probably boot, but the amount of time that it will stay on and be usable degrades to almost nothing.
Right now i have taken the battery off the computer and it seems to be working.

[richk]

The machine will work without a battery installed. It can cause the CPU to run at less than full speed. A bad battery with good electronics and poor, but still working, cells will also work. A battery with bad electronics can cause the machine to shut off suddenly