IDE Hard Drive. Help.

Hello Everyone. This morning loaded on a new Samsung 1gb Memory Stick. Computer worked fine then on boot up later in the day BIOS stops at Detecting Secondary Slave ...None.

Bios v.6.0
Asus A7a266 ACPI Bios Revision 1005
AMD Athalon 1400
Mem Test 262144k OK
Bios Extension v1.0A
Initialise Plug and Play
PNP Init Completed
Trend ChipAwayVirus on Guard
Dectcting Primary Master/Secondary Slave/Secondary Master

Then on Detecting Secondary Slave ...Fail

Computer won't go on. Have changed BIOS to disable both Secondary Master and Slave but it doesn't help. Floppy works but cannot boot from it or DVD or CD etc.

I'm up the creek without a paddle. All my final artwork is on the Hard Disk. This year is my final degree year and I am pulling my hair out. I just don't know what to do. I have looked on the forum and I have tried changing BIOS but nothing else.

I am most grateful for any help. So many thanks. John.

Hello John,

Welcome to PCHF.

Do you have another PC you can test the HDD in to see if it really is HDD failure, or a controller problem onboard the motherboard?