Windows is failing to boot - can't detect hard disks

Hi,
My pc suddenly turned off in the middle of me using it and it hasn't been able to boot since.
During the first bit when you turn it on, it fails in detecting Pri master and Pri slave and then it asks for boot disk.
So i inserted the Xp cd i had but it won't repaire or reinstall windows because it "cant detect hard disk"
I don't know very much about the hardwar side of things so i would appereciate any help greatly!
Also does this mean i've lost all the data on this pc?
Thank you
 
If the hard drives are physically dead then you may have lost the data but that's probably not the case. It's entirely possible that the motherboard IDE/SATA ports died or are going bad.

Can you list your hardware and how the hard drives are connected?
 
thanks for your reply, but i really dont know much about hardware, is there any instructions you can give me to find out the answer to your question?
Thank you
 
Do you have access to another drive?
Do you know someone who could help you with some of the troubleshooting?

If the system BIOS is not recognizing the drive then either one or more of the drives are dead or the motherboard connections are faulty.

I would suggest either removing the drives and replacing them with a temporary drive and seeing if that drive is detected or trying the existing drives one by one to see if maybe one of them is causing the problem.
 
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