Help with errors

I have used your information for years, I want to thank you many times over for the help i have found. I am having issues now that i cannot fix on my own as it is way over my head. I am hopping one of you can offer assistance.

This is my computer:
Compaq Presario 6024US PC Desktop
Processor Intel Pentium 4 1.8 GHz
Installed Memory 512 MB (DDR SDRAM)
Operating System Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
Processor Type Intel Pentium 4
Processor Speed 1.8 GHz
Processor Manufacturer Intel
Motherboard Bus Speed 400 MHz
Installed RAM 512 MB x2 Max Supported RAM 1 GB
Installed Video Memory 64 MB
Hard Drive Capacity 80 GB

Here is my problem there was a clicking sound that started near the hard drive. I cleaned the computer and turned it back on making sure i plugged in everything. I get an error PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable and PXE-M0f: Exiting Intel PXE ROM.

I turned it off many times over and rechecked all cables. It asks me to to save changes F1 and i do, then it tells me that there is a disc in the a drive that is not allowing me to boot up. I have read many things with tons of different responses, could it be HD is fried ?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

The pc is trying to boot from the network card, go into bios, set default levels, and you will be good to go. This might get you back where you were, hard drive could be bad. ed

http://www.nocrash.com/ncbbs/msgs/3247.shtml

 

Tunered,
Bios are over my head, i did find a thread about them and tried changing the order but honestly dont know which one is right. There is 4 choices :

IDE CD Rom
Diskette A
USB Device
Compaq Ethernet Controller

Thanks for the quick reply!

 

OK, when your pc boots up there should be a screen that says something like f2 for setup, f10 to change boot order or something close, [esc] might be a default way too. If you still cant get there, pull the motherboard battery out for a few minutes[it looks like a shiny nickle], unplug power supply before pulling battery. Let me know how it works out. PS we dont want to change boot order, we just want to reset default values.

 

Tim has me thinking now, did you unplug the harddrive to do your cleaning? If so check the cable and pins where it plugs in, possibly a few bent pins in there. ed

 

I can get to boot order but i dont know which one goes first out of the choices:
IDE CD Rom
Diskette A
USB Device
Compaq Ethernet Controller

Some other things i was reading before i came here told me to change the order ... /wince

As for the cleaning; I did unplug the hardrive but i have replugged it in the boot strap multiple times and i am sure it is in there tightly.

Should i pull the battery to try and reset things?

 

Spoke with HP for a while today he assisted me to take out the battery and check the bios set up. He included a way to check the HD, which i think is bad. Thank you both for your help, i will check into getting a new HD.