All CD/DVD drives,harddrives not recognized?

[patriarch1]

Dell 8250 does not recognize hard drive or CD/DVD drives? Have to boot with a boot disk? Using a boot disk(floppy disk) the ONLY one that shows indicates NO HARD DRIVE so will boot fromC:\Windows?. Doing this produces a desk top with icons! Have Windows XP, service pack 3. Pressing F2(bios?) indicates NO hard-drive found? NEED HELP BADLY!

 

[musicman490]

try going into the BIOS and check if there's a way ofloading the bios defaults (usually under an Advanced tab). Presumably you don't have two drives on the same cable?