I have a Dell Laptop Inspirion 5000. recently the desktop disappeared and in the reboot from cd the hard disk disappeared. The XP CD reads "cannot find hard disk...."

The hardware checks out ok, but I cannot get to a place to run software checks.

Can I connect to another computer to reset the system.

Any help offered is appreciated.

Look thru the steps in the following link to see if you can restore XP via the Dell method:

http://support.dell.com/support/topi...30030ABD62041A

The Hard disk appears to be corrupt. I'm not sure if the unit contracted a virus.
The unit does not appear to be able to boot from another computer as a networked unit.

Did you work thru the Dell reinstall guide? It is quite detailed.

This system pre dates the symatec recovery system. The steps followed do not recover anything. Without the OS Disk the system reads "No Operating System Found." With a XP Disk or the Win2K Disk the system then reads "No Hard Disk Found or the disk is corrupt."

The unit has been connected to an external system to run the drive as a slave for re formatting. Attempts were unsuccessful.[FONT=Garamond][SIZE=5][COLOR=DarkSlateBlue]