Da Mail Man

greetings all,

....unique problem i ran into here..... i have a friend that has a generic computer (win xp, 1g ram, 80gb sata hard drive)....... he got an error on the computer yesterday that said (to the effect) hard drive failure or hd failure save all data, drive failure immanent, etc).....

.....well, i have the computer in front of me now and i have unplugged all cables and attempted to restart the computer..... at this point it is saying that it doesn't find a hard drive at all.....

.... so, i reset the cmos (pin jumper at battery) and restarted the computer and i pretty much get the same thing. i have a brand new 320gb sata wd hard drive and connected it up and the computer does "squat"!......could the batter be dead or so low that it would cause this to happen?...any ideas would be greatly appreciated!