Here is the low down. I formatted my PC and figured that after installing XP i'd dual boot Ubuntu (9.04). So all went well, XP and Ubuntu installed as anticipated i could access both OS' for a couple of hours. When i was in Ubuntu, i was trying to change my primary monitor (22") to have the toolbar instead of my 19". I went on Ubuntu forums to see what had to be done, and i needed to reboot for the changes to take effect. After i rebooted, it didn’t list any of my 2 hard drives (150gb raptor, 1tb Samsung) or my Asus DVD/CD drive. My motherboard (Nvidia 680I) stated 7F which only says in the manual as "Check POST error and display them and ask user intervention". Well, the lovely post error comes up as: floppy disk(s) fail (40) Real helpful right? And considering i have NO floppy drive...(its a custom built PC) And i have two options, F1 to continue and DEL for BIOS. I checked BIOS first, reset to default, removed floppy drive from the boot menu, rebooted, same issue. Hit F1 to continue now, and the only bootable option is the NVIDIA Boot Agent and comes up with this: NVIDIA BOOT AGENT 231.0528 PXE-E61: MEDIA TEST FAILURE, CHECK CABLE PXE-M0F: EXITING NVIDIA BOOT AGENT This goes on a continuous loop, failing every time. I've checked all cables and it all seems fine. Now i cant even access my CD/DVD drive (completely disabled) which means i can’t even use a recovery disk or what have you. I am very doubtful its my hard drive...i leaning towards a /boot issue. But i don’t really know how i can even approach this. Any other ideas? Thank you in advance for your contribution.

Check the BIOS. It sounds like it's reset itself. Could be the motherboard battery needs to be replaced.

please read the entire post...i said i had checked the bios. ive done ALL obvious stuff. im looking for something new...