Well like I said im not getting any safe mode options. Only asking me what i want to boot from.

Woohoo now boots up fine. My second HDD is BAD, so says BIOS.

gratz, at least a HDD is the cheapest part you could replace

Does the HDD actually need to be replaced or would a fresh install of an OS fix it?

seeing as the bios is hardware oriented and its not being seen - its reasonably safe to assume you arent going to get an OS on it - think about it, its gotta be detected to get an OS on it.

replace the bastard with something sweet.

Well here's an excuse to go SSD.

I say giver. It would be one amazing upgrade for performance you will really see.

IDE

That horse should have been put out to pasture years ago.

Surprised it still works at all!

... So ya... my main system only has 1 drive in it and it's a 160GB IDE.

The last time I bought parts I was in the process of looking for a house so I thought I could save $100 by re-using the drive I had, and since it's never failed (Western Digital) or filled up (I'm good about burning things I want to keep off to DVD), I've never had to buy something to replace it. I did however buy an extremely cheap external drive to back up my important documents in case it does fail but ya... that's my excuse.

You know it's bad when people selling used parts have things that would be a fairly substantial upgrade for you... I never thought I would be one of *those* people but here we are.