Black screen wont POST/boot unless pressure in specific spot - Ground issue?

My friend owns a Sony PCG-7L1L and has a problem. If he presses the power button the power/hdd lights come on as if there is activity but it remains a black screen. If he presses down in a certain spot, above the hdd bay, and holds that pressure it will go through the boot up process and he can release the pressure once it gets to the Windows login screen and the laptop works fine. The only problem he has afterwards is that the laptop will not go through the shutdown process properly. It will just hang in the shutting down screen until, you guessed it, he presses on that spot again. There has to be a circuit or loop or something that is being fixed by pressure in that spot. The weird thing is that the spot isn't even above any portion of the motherboard. So I have it dismantled right now. Any ideas on what I should check in to? I've made sure the CMOS battery is properly seated and I've been checking for any loose wires/connections but I've come up empty. This has to be something to do with the power up/POST process I'm guessing. Where are the engineers at??