Hardrive Issues

I sent my beautiful daughter away, a freshman to college with a used, refurbished laptop with Windows 98, that her grandfather had purchased for her. Before she even made it out the door she had fried the port for the telephone line by leaving it plugged in during a thunderstorm. By December she was whining about how "slow" the computer runs. By May it wouldn't run at all. When we try to re-boot it, we get the nice little message that there is no hard drive detected. Is the computer dead?
Mox
College Mom

 

Hmm your harddrive could have easily been fried ,but windows 98 how old is that computer? it could just be the harddrive is defective ,you never know with a laptop.

 

I don't know the age of the computer. It was bought by someone else and had been refurbished. Is a fried HardDrive and a Defective Hard Drive going to need the same solution?