Won't boot

[wefromo]

WinXP, Older Gateway, 160gb hard drive.  Been getting worse and worse about finding hard drive on boot.  It's fine after it finally boots up after a long warm up and several tries if I just leave it on.  But today its been on now for a couple of hours and have tried many times and it just won't find HD or boot.  I have changed the boot sequence to HD first, CD rom first, etc.  Still no luck.  It won't boot from CD rom either from the Win XP installation disk.  Can't find my old Win setup floppy but don't think it is going to boot from that either.  Beginning to think it must be motherboard since it won't boot from the Win XP cd rom.  Any ideas or suggestions?

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

Beginning to think it must be motherboard since it won't boot from the Win XP cd rom.

Remove the CMOS Battery (on the motherboard) for about 10 - 20 minutes and then put it back in and see what happens.

[wefromo]

Thanks, will give it a try and report.

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

All Right. 

[wefromo]

Well, that didn't help.  Still won't find HD.  Have another computer, am going to switch HD's and see what happens.  Will report.

[wefromo]

Apparently it is a bad HD.  Switched and it would not boot in other computer either.  But the one I took it out of the other comp booted fine on the computer in question.  Guess I would rather it be HD than MB.  The one that went bad was a 160GB Western Digital and was not very old.  Don't remember for sure when I bought it but pretty sure it is less than two years old.  Just enough to be out of warrenty probaly.   Wonder if there's any hope for repair of this HD?  Anyway, thanks for your input.

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

If the computer is not recognized at all, I don't think there is a way to fix it...