My PC does not restart when restart pressed. Cold boot OK

[lazt]

I have a HP pavilion M7590 PC.
I have contacted their support and have been told to recover windows.
My problem is that the PC boots from startup fine everytime and shutsdown OK everytime.
However if I restart it shutsdown then hangs on the Bios HP screen ie the screen (press F1 or esc or recovery drive). THe hard drive lights solildy for a while then goes out and a clicking can be heard.
I have tested all the hardware/ memory/ processors everything passes.
If i press the power button and hold the PC turns off and when power button pressed again reboots no problem.
I know I should just never use restart just the turn off button, but I would like to make my PC better.
I did a windows scan and it asked for them to be replaced but I have a recovery drive not a CD and there was no option to point it to there. Although it did sat it could be because it was a different type of windows.
I have Win XP Media Centre.
I have searched everywhere and it appears I am the only one with this issue
Hopefully somebody knows.

[street1 (RIP)]

You say"THe hard drive lights solildy for a while then goes out and a clicking can be heard".

You need to test your hard drive with the manufacturers software.

http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287

[lazt]

I have run the seagate scan and the drive passed the long test.

I was considering reloading the bios again?
Can anyone tell me why it hangs on a reboot ie whrn I press the restart button and not on a cold start.
It does try to read the drive, I can hear it whining but then it stops.
Could it be just a windows file missing?