hard drive problem

a relative of mine's computer has recently ceased to work, she decided to give it to me so that i could take a look at it and try to fix whatever the problem was:

when i boot up the computer, er...it doesnt
it powers up and begins to load up
then it says, system boot failure, insert cd-rom, floppy etc
so i decide that i am going to try to format the computer with my windows xp cd, but when i get to the stage where i want to choose which partition to format, it fails to detect the hard drive

so i took the cover of the computer off and checked that all the cables and wires were connected, and everything was ok

if anyone can help me with this problem it would be a great help
thank you

p.s. the computer is an 1999 evesham vale

 

It almost always has to do with the cables connected at the back of HDD, try pulling them out, maybe theres some dust caught up there, it should do the trick.

 

I dont think a faulty/dirty cable is the problem here. My bet is the drive took a dump. Does BIOS recognize the drive? Does it spin up when you power on the PC? Does the drive make any funny noises? A 7 year old HDD is probably getting close to the end of its life if the PC was on all the time.

~Rich

 

i cant hear it spin up, and i dont think that the computer recognises that its there

hmmm, looks like the hard drive is knackered then