Computer Won't Recognize Hard Drive

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I was fooling around with my computer which has Windows XP Pro on it, trying to add an extra hard drive as a slave, but to no avail. After I gave up I loaded my computer normally, only to receive the message "disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter". I didn't change anything on the master drive whatsoever, yet it gives me this message. When I go into the BIOS, it doesn't even recognize a hard drive even being plugged in to the master IDE, yet the CD-ROM drives are recognized. I've tried different harddrives, different IDE cables, and jumper positions, but it doesn't seem to want to work at all. The actual harddrives I plug in power up, but the computer won't recognize any of them. The computer is custom built with a Pentium 4 with a 160 gig Western Digital harddrive and 700 and some megabytes of ram. Any help on this problem would be much appreciated.
 
Unplug the HardDrive data cable from the board again (not the harddrive end)
Unplug all external power (power cord and adaptor and battery for laptops)
Hold the power ON button in for 30 secs (dispersing all internal voltage)
Replug the HardDrive data cable back in (whilst you're there, check the power plug too)
Put the external power cord back in
Turn on
 
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