Hi, a brief explanation My computer would not boot at all one day recently when I turned it on. No Dell screen even, let alone anything with Windows. It has been a reliable computer for a few years. I tried a few times and it did boot up. Once. Duing that time I ran virus protect. Nothing. I have firewalls and virus protect so I did not think so. Since then I have tried installing Windows on another, formatted HD. It goes through early install steps, but then won't go to Windows, but circles back again like nothing was installed. So I checked BIOS. It is not recognizing the attached HD. I tried a few different HD. Different cables. Nothing. It does recognize my CD/DVD drives. I reset the BIOS. I was going to flash BIOS. The Diagnostic code lights in the back are yellow, green, green, yellow. Not one that is on the list I have. But similar (opposite) to Board failure. I wonder if it is the IDE port on the motherboard. DO I need to replace the motherboard? If so, do I have to buy the exact same one? There are a lot of cables that go to the front I have not seen on other mbs. ANY thoughts would be great. THANKS!!

Reset the optimum defaults in bios with new hard drive...Newer Dells require that the ide devices are reconfigured when you change or add a hard drive. Rich M www.kickenhardware.net

vtgreenboy, To confirm whether or not the Primary IDE Controller is physically OK on the Motherboard, can you confirm or refute whether one of your CD devices is connected as Slave to the Primary IDE and it too worked when you stated "It does recognize my CD/DVD drives". What actually you did when you stated you "reset the BIOS"? Was it setting it to it "Optimum Defaults" as suggested in Rich Mentzel's post above? M

If it sees the cd then there is some hope that it is OK. You need to trouble shoot why the bios doesn't report the hard drive. Ideas are bad IDE port, bad or wrong cable, bad HD or the memory area that reports to bios had been damaged. Wrong jumper settings on HD or attached drive. Bios that can't read newer drive. (not real likely in this case but check Dell site) The general rule for flashing a bios is NOT. While it can impove a lot of things and can get damaged or infected you run other risks. Some dells use an odd way to get back data. They put a hidden partition with the oem data on it. Sometimes that confuses other apps and installs.