What The Heck Happened???

Good Morning all. Last night my pc shut down, and didn't boot back up. No body was there when it shut down, they had been in the other room. Upon boot it said disk not found, press f1 to continue. NOTHING!
I went into setup and the cd drive and hard drive say they are not installed.
Cannot boot from XP disk without it recognizing. IT does,However recognize the floppy.
I switched my cable connection to the laptop to do this. Needlesstosay, there is no floppy dirve on this to make a boot disk.
I have another pc that needs a hard drive, and yet newer dell then the one I had just crash. I have to get a SATA drive because everything is more modern in this. Even the PCI express cards etc.
My other question would be...... I will have trouble installing my XP software in this won't I. I mean with Microsoft. Even though it is a dell, and I am assuming my DELL software will work, Microsoft will deny me, and I will have to verify, right????
Any suggestions on what to do to this hard disk not found and cd no found is welcomed. Thank you. I am going to work now, and will look forward to hearing something when I return.
Gina
AE

 

Try changing the battery on the mother board. Make sure all connections are tight. Reseat anything that you can including all cards and RAM.