Computer Can't find it's own HD

Yesterday (as most Sundays) I did some system cleaning and ran an extra program that I hadn't run in a while.. duplicate cleaner then did a defrag - rebooted and continued my computing - no problems.
I powered down last night - standard proceedure, no snags.
This morning I got up and turned on the pc.. got prompted to reboot because of a missing file (all caps ending with DRM I think..could have been MDR but I'm not sure. half the file name was not visible on screen and I didn't write it down) I cannot reproduce this message now.
So, I went into the bios - configured to boot from disc - and now the computer is telling me that I do not have a hard drive installed. I'm unable to use my OS disc to perform an installation recovery or even reinstall the whole blasted thing.
I have no clue what to do next.
Any thoughts?

 

brand and model of computer... umm husband built it, (spring 2006.. fired up winter 2007) mixed brand parts. He is unavaliable right now, fortunatly his computer is available.
I am/was running XP, not sure if its a SATA drive.

MBR? *I know.. you're rolling your eyes now, right?* I don't know what the letters stand for.

the original message was a missing file of more than 5 characters (4 1/2 visable) with one or more that were burried off to the left side of the screen and no file extension.. all upper case.

I'm having thoughts of trying to unplug the HD and re plug it in.. Can't imagine how a connection problem could have occured.. but might be worth a try.

 

Ok.. updating my information
After reboot and post bios the error message is:
NTLDR is missing
press alt ctrl del to restart

going in the bios the drive is present but for some reason not recognized

yes.. it's a SATA drive.

 

I'm familiar with rebuilding the boot.ini file, had to do that with hubby's computer a while back, however, I am still faced with the problem of the computer not recognizing the hard drive present. I cannot boot to anything past the bios because of this. Attempts to recover or reinstall windows fail because it doesn't know it has a drive to continue the process.

 

do you know what brand the hard drive is? if so, go to their website and download their utility to boot from and check your drive out..

 

Hi,

MBR = Master Boot Record. Missing HTLDR can usually be tricked by makeing a file with that name in the Root Directory. Does not have to have any data in it. Maybe?

Good Luck, Jim

 

ty ty.. you folks pointed me in the right direction, again
It was two problems.. getting the system to find the HD.. then copying the NTLDR files from my OS disc back to the HD
I'm up and running! yeah!

thanks!