My son`s PC has all of a sudden stopped recognising either of the 2 hard drives,or the DVD and CD writer drives. The power seems OK because both drives open and close. When the PC is started it tries to boot from floppy. I`ve been in the bios(Amibios)and when I try to auto detect it says no hard drives or disk drives are installed. I`ve downloaded the boot disks for WinXP Home to try and boot from them,but after they`ve installed all the start up tools it comes up with a message saying there`s no CD or hard drives installed on the PC,and aborting the installation. As far as I can see all connections inside the case are intact,there`s no loose cables or anything. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks. Steve.

Hi, 1) New BIOS battery 2) Clear NVRAM and / or resest BIOS to defaults 3) New IDE ribbon cables they are I know from experience easily damaged but never ever appear to be obviously damaged. hth Ceri

I think the battery must be OK because the time and date are still accurate. I`ve tried BIOS defaults and no luck,but the ribbon cables are something I`ll check this weekend when I can get my hands on some spare ones to try out. All that mess of cable in there and I never thought to check them out,maybe a trip to the Opticians for me too :) Thanks for the help,much appreciated. Steve.