hard drive failed or motherboard problem?

[GeTSm0keD]

hey

I have a computer that seemed to of died at random
we walked in and the thing was just off (we left it on)

I turn it on and it says "drive 0 can not be found"
I took the drive out of that box and put it into mine as a slave..
and it says drive o and 1 can not be found.. I tried master as well.. same error msg..
so I'm assuming the drive went bad, over heated (I dont know)
the drive spins up and powers up.. just no computer I put it in seems to find the drive..

heres the real problem:
when I try to install a new hard drive in the comp..
it keeps tellin me "drive 0 can not be found"

Ive tried 3 different spare drives I have..
and I know these drives to work..
some are unformated, other with win xp installs..
and the comp keeps tellin me it cant find the drives..

my question is:
is there anything like bios settings.. or some kinda config
that I need to delete/clear so that the comp will find the new drives I put into it?

any ideas before I buy a quick 300$ dell to replace it?

 

[hurricanes]

try changing the IDE cable.. if it still fails . these is some problem with the IDE drive in Motherboard..

 

[sPlAtOiD]

Also try the secondary IDE port on motherboard .The primary may be shot. Also have you formated the new drive and made an active partition? If not that will be a problem also.

 

[FlashDude]

One the other system could you get it to boot off its hdd with the problem one as slave?? and if so does it show up in the bios/post screen and have you looked in computer management? You could try resetting the bios, clear the cmos/remove the battery and/or jumper. And is the other machine XP? because if it is formatted in NTSF then 98 or ME won't recognize it at all.