Apparently overnight some creature snuck into my computer and fiddled with it, because the night before when I turned it off it was working fine. At startup my system seems to freeze at the HP logo screen (F1 system setup and F10 system recovery keys don't work, actually no function keys work) after a few seconds a message from American Megatrends comes up showing that it detects the Hard disk, however, at the bottom of the screen it states "Primary Master Hard Disk Error" F1 to resume. I can hit F1 to enter BIOS setup utilty and the Hard disk is listed [maxtor, calypso]. Once I exit out of there, a black screen appears with the following message: "Reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key". At this point I can do nothing. No function keys work, pressing keys just repeats the message. HP support had me swap the Hard disk cables with the CD-rom cables- in Bios the Hard drive was then listed as the Second master and the cd-rom was listed as the primary master - I guess this was to check the cables/controllers. They also had me insert my system recovery cd's, in doing that, a message appears: No Hard Disk Found, system recovery cannot be continued, press any key to continue. As I press any key, the message just repeats. I have gotten nowhere with HP support thus far, they want to send me windows xp recovery cd's, but I thought that was what my system recovery cd's were for??...has anyone had this problem before?? I would appreciate any suggestions. Thank you. Clueless in Japan

soundslike the HD is really damaged. if it's being picked up the bios, then its getting power, so that's not the problem. first, try resetting your BIOS back to Defaults. if that doesnt work, try booting from a floppy disk or XP cd and see if you can access the C:\ If you can, do a DIR and see what comes up. IF it lists all the files, then more than likely the problem is MBR related, and you can do a Repair form the CD. If you CANT access C:\, then it looks like you're in more trouble and you might have to start a fresh partition on the drive and start all over. post back, or email me with more. faster, better, MORE!!

Thank you for the suggestions. I have tried to reset the BIOS, but no luck. I also tried to reboot from the XP cd - but I don't have that much computer smarts, and it didn't seem that I could access C:\ I have since gotten back on with HP support and they have now determined that it may be a problem with my hard drive. They are sending me a new one. Thanks again. Clueless in Japan