Need an opinion

I work from home on a Dell laptop. This morning when I turned it on, things started scrolling around the screen and it went to a blue screen with lines moving from right to left looks like. I tried taking the battery out but that didn't help. Is this machine dead or is there something I can do like booting from a disk to get it working? I don't know how to do that, I just remember my husband used to do it.....