Hard Drives on Standby

I have a Dell Dimension 4600 running XP (Phoenix ROM BIOS PLUS Ver 1.10 A2). I decided to shut down the computer and restart. I accidentally hit the "Standby" option. The computer promptly went on standby. I pressed the main power button to turn the computer back on. Now the computer won't boot. The black screen text says neither my master hard drive or my slave HD are recognized / found. The F2 setup utility tells me both drives are "Unknown". I unplugged the computer overnight and tried again - same result. It seems that the hard drives are hibernating.
Where do I start?

 

Have you tried Safe Mode and Last Known Good Configuration?
Also, it's probably going to be more complicated than this, but you could try disconnecting your hard drives (maybe unplug computer at this point as well), then booting without them (although it won't boot, of course, but let it go as far as it will). Then turn off, unplug, reconnect hard drives and boot again.

 

Thanks for your interest. I tried all those solutions without help. I removed the hard drives and used a USB adapter to connect them to another computer. The drives seem to work normally and I can access the files. I then reinstalled the drives but again no luck with booting. I next inserted the original Dell Operating System Reinstallation CD and ran some Windows repair function that gave me a C: prompt. Again, if I run the old DOS command of "dir" I can see the contents of the drive. I am beginning to fear a motherboard failure. Any other suggestions?

 

Just found the problem. The slave HD is broken. The machine works fine with the slave uninstalled. When I attached the slave to my other computer, the disk never is seen (with the jumper in Master position). The HD makes a "breep-breep" noise about every 30 secs but never is read by the 2nd computer. I guess the 30GB of data is lost. Thanks again for your help.

 

Well done on finding the problem.
The data on that drive is not necessarily lost, although it might cost you a little to get it back - unless you know how to pull a hard drive apart yourself. Some people will charge a lot to get that data back, but you should look around for a cheap alternative - if you need that data. I had a HDD go once and I found someone who knew how to interchange parts. He bought a similar HDD on eBay and swapped bit over. Cost me AU$50.