Hi,
I just read through your post quickly, and at a guess, I'd say theres a good
chance that your battery has died and the bios settings have been reset to
default, which sometimes means no drives are being looked for by the bios.
Hopefully, it's a straightforward thing to change it, it should be a small
round silver battery on the motherboard. (make sure you ground yourself
first though)
They're cheap to buy and easy to replace. It's a bit more tricky if it has a
different type of battery though.
I usually buy mine from the supermarket for just over £1.00 (I'm in the UK).
I'd try that first if all that's happened is that the pc's been sitting
there idle for around a year.
I can't say the amount of times this has happened to me, so I'll just go for
'lots'.
Once you've changed the battery, enter the bios (usually by pressing del. as
it starts up) and set it to recognise the drives. (usually autodetect or
words to that effect).
Save the settings and exit and see how you get on from there.
Hopefully, it will boot into windows for you.
Let us know how you get on.
Hope this helps.
Michele Sayer

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