PC will not boot; stuck in setup..

[CPitalo]

I haven't booted from a CD because I haven't had a burner available to me but I do now. Going to try ES-Tool again.

[Computer_Commando]

I suspect the onboard diagnostic tool you ran before is ES-Tool, but go ahead and run it from the CD, anyway.  It will probably give the same result:
Drive 0: SAMSUNG SP2504C - Fail. Return Code: 7
Look for a new hard drive, 250GB SATA HDD is about $50.

[CPitalo]

Roger that.. if this HDD is unrepairable, I need to find a way to pull my data from it.

[Computer_Commando]

Hard Drives are not repairable.
May not be possible to retrieve data if it's dead unless you have $1000 to spend on a Recovery Service (businesses that do this for money).  It's a very labor intensive procedure and there is no guarantee.  They actually remove the "hard" from the hard drive and install into a different hard drive and then try to retrieve all the data they can find.

Lessons Learned:  you can't have too many backups of data.

What you do next:
Install new hard drive on SATA 1 (Master)
Install Windows and programs on new hard drive
Boot, reboot and insure all is working.

Install old hard drive on SATA 3 (Slave)
Hope BIOS recognizes old drive and insure Boot Order is SATA 1, 1st
Hope Windows recognizes old drive and assigns drive letter.
Copy your data from old drive to new drive.
Make backups of your data.

[CPitalo]

Sounds like a plan. I appreciate the assistance, y'all!

[Computer_Commando]

If I'm looking at your Dell XPS710 correctly, you may not have extra SATA power connectors, so you might need 1 extra SATA data cable and 1 SATA power adapter for connecting the old hard drive.  Buy them when you get the new SATA hard drive, they're cheap.  You've got 6 SATA data ports and 1 IDE data port.
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/xps710/en/SM_EN/techov1.htm#wp1052309

[CPitalo]

If I'm looking at your Dell XPS710 correctly, you may not have extra SATA power connectors, so you might need 1 extra SATA data cable and 1 SATA power adapter for connecting the old hard drive.  Buy them when you get the new SATA hard drive, they're cheap.  You've got 6 SATA data ports and 1 IDE data port.
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/xps710/en/SM_EN/techov1.htm#wp1052309

Excellent, I appreciate you going the extra mile!

C