There's no reason (yet) to assume the HD is toast. It may well have recoverable files if placed in another machine. This sounds more like a motherboard problem (IDE Controller?). What's the make and model of the computer? Have you tried safe mode? (Probably won't help, but worth a try). Dianne wrote: > Hi Hugh, PHogan, Scott and John, > You guys are great. OK. Let me tell you what I have tried. > 1. I checked all the cables and made sure there were good connections > (floppy, cd, and hd). All seemed ok there. I went to the BIOS and under > IDE CONFIGURATION: it said: IDE Controller-Both, Hard Disk > Pre-Delay-Disabled, Primary IDE Master:Samsung SV4084H, Primary IDE Slave: > Samsung CD-R/RW Drive, Secondary IDE Master: SS06-Samsung DVD Under POWER > it said Hard Drive Enabled. So I am assuming that all this means it is > recognizing the Hard Drive. I attempted to boot some other disk (a windows > 98 boot disk), no go, as well as re-tried the Windows Me Boot disk, no go. > > I am going to hate to tell these folks that they have lost everything on > the > HD, is that what you think it is? I have a recovery CD-Rom as well, I just > cant get it to recognize it, I changed the BIOS to read the CD first, > but no > go there either. Yes, I changed them back. > Thanks for all the help, if you can think of anything else I can try, > let me > know. > Dianne Visit our website regularly for FAQs, articles, how-to's, tech tips and much more http://freepctech.com