No the BIOS does not seem to see the hard drive, and while we are on the subject ...
I can't see how the CD ROM can be elevated above the hard drive in the "Boot from" sequence. The Computer did respond to the Windows CD in the drive, and would have installed if it had found a hard drive.
Not sure how I can change what the BIOS "sees", as I said the computer did not respond when the MB CD was inserted. I suspect that this is usually done fairly early in the assembly process, but I don't really know that.
It is a little hard to believe this all started with an attempt to start from the last good setting, or for that matter how an incomplete Windows update could start this chain of events. Computers sure are weird sometimes.

Well it is 5 AM here and I am off to bed.

I will review this thread tomorrow.

The BIOS needs to 'see' the drive. If it does not then nothing else will.

If the BIOS 'saw' the CD then the CD is set to boot prior to the HDD.

The motherboard CD is not a Boot CD. It only runs under windows after windows is installed.

At this point you only have one problem.

Get the BIOS to 'see' the HDD.

Again I will review and be back tomorrow but the above is my current summary.

I agree, getting the BIOS to see the hard drive is the stumbling block. If you are able to suggest a way to get it to do that it will probably see Windows and load it.
Sleep well

What I would do is first off remove any external drives.

If there are none then check the connections to the hard drive and motherboard. Unplug / replug.

At the same time you can verify that it is ATA or SATA:



Also where exactly are you looking in the BIOS to determine if the BIOS sees this drive?

During the POST screen is a HDD mentioned at all?


...

Well rested and full of ideas it appears!
Firstly, no external drives,
secondly where I am looking to tell if BIOS sees hard drive is the first boot device:

Select a first boot device
> Removable
-Floppies
> Hard Disk
-1st Master
>CDROM
-2nd Slave, Lite On DVDRW LH-18A1P

2nd Slave sees the Lite On, the 1st master shows what I have indicated in the quote, no specific HDD identified, I had to look at the invoice to determine that the HDD is Samsung. Well I found SA80, you told me it was a Samsung. The above is verbatim what I see on the screen, can't take a screen shot with the computer in its current state.
Additionally the Windows CD could not find a hard drive so if Windows can't see it then it seems that it is a fair assumption that BIOS is not seeing it, but we have kind of established that.
I think the invoice saying IDE also indicates the drive is ATA, (my, limited, understanding says ATA and IDE are the same thing) but a look inside would surely resolve this beyond any doubt.
Interestingly the MB box that the supplier put all the CDs, manuals etc in to (do computer suppliers do that in the US?) contains a SATA cable kit. I know because someone who knows more about this stuff than me installed a new SATA disk in my computer and I had to buy the new hard drive, and a SATA kit so it could be connected.
Thanks for the pictures, I appreciate the visual clues (a picture is worth a thousand words). I hope you didn't have to pull computers apart to get that snap. Subject to the logistics I will arm myself with a screwdriver and see if the drive has become disconnected from the MB.
Did I mention the lady has cats that chew cables? If they have gotten inside the case that would be ... surprising.
I will post again with my next progress report.
Thanks again

New motherboards contain all the possible data cables they use. This is standard yes.

IDE is a motherboard term more than a hard drive term but these terms are often mixed and confusing.

SATA is actually IDE/SATA and ATA is actually IDE/ATA

IDE is the motherboard channel format.

Again 1st Master might be blank due to a SATA drive not being assigned to the proper channel.

Thanks for that.
I am awaiting a phone call before I can get to the computer.
If the channel is set incorrectly (I think unlikely because the computer did work correctly, and the owner would not be fiddling with BIOS settings), is this changed via the BIOS? If so how? Or should I be looking at the MB manual for that?

Anything that caused the BIOS to reset to Default would potentially alter the BIOS HDD priority order to
default which very well could have shuffled off the drive if it was setup as other than default.

As I described here the BIOS needs to know "what" hard drive to look for. In otherwords it needs to know what channel to look for.

Originally Posted by jephree

Channels denote the various hard drive ports on the motherboard.

IDE ports are usually like:

0 Primary Master | 0 Primary slave | 1 Secondary Master | 1 Secondary slave | 2 Primary Master | 3 Primary Master | etc.

If it is a SATA drive plugged into port 3 than either move the cable to port 2 or tell the BIOS that you want to boot port 3.

The setting would be under Hard Drive Priority.

Nifty!
Cut and pasted into Word, printed out and waiting with the screwdriver.
Stay tuned.

Gee, been a while since I have updated this thread!
Problem turned out to be a failing HDD, which was replaced. And then the computer had to be returned TWICE to the shop that installed the HDD to have "loose connections" dealt with.
With the aforementioned "logistic" problems it has taken until now to get the computer working again.
It has some error messages at start up, but to include those here would be kind of off topic and I will start a new thread.
Thanks for all the helpful suggestions