ERROR 0200: Failure Fixed Disk 0

[vanagon40]

My apologies in advance if I have posted in the wrong forum (and feel free to move my post to the more appropriate forum (or delete my post and send a PM as to where to post)).

My PC is dead, but this is NOT an emergency as this is a very non-essential PC. I posted here only because it seemed like the most appropriate forum.

This is a 5 or 6 year old (more or less) Gateway All-In-One, Intel P4. OS is (was) Windows XP (probably home but I'm not certain). On startup I get the following screen (tapping F8 to attempt to start in the safe mode does not make any difference):

PheonixBIOS 4.0 Release 6.0 02PB
Copyright 1985-2002 Phoenix Technologies Ltd.
All Rights Reserved

(C) Copyright SAMSUNG Electronics Co., Ltd. 2002
CPU = Intel (R) Pentium (R) 4 CPU 2.40GHz
0640K System RAM Passed
0510M Extended RAM Passed
512K Cache RAM Passed
System BIOS shadowed
Video BIOS shadowed
Fixed Disk 0: Maxtor ATHENA
ADAPI CD-ROM: SAMSUNG CD-ROM SN-124
Mouse initialized
Event Log messages, enter Setup to view
ERROR
0200: Failure Fixed Disk 0

Press <F1> to resume, <F2> to Setup

Pressing F1 results in:

Intel (R) Boot Agent Version 4.1.08
Copyright (C) 1997-2002, Intel Corporation
PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-M0F: Exiting Intel Boot Agent
Operating System not found

Pressing F2 results in a "PhoenixBIOS Setup Utility" screen

I am not a computer illiterate, but I am close.

My daughter was using this PC at college, and she provided no insight as to the failure.

Again, this is not a true emergency as time is not an issue, but I would like to get this PC running again if possible.

[Thrax]

Your hard drive is dead.

[vanagon40]

I am not a computer illiterate, but I am close.

Your hard drive is dead.

I take it that means hopeless.

[Leonardo]

I take it that means hopeless.uh....yes

Of course you could spring for a professional recovery service ($$$) if there is data on the drive that was very valuable to you.

Not to rub it in your face, but we would be very happy to provide you ideas for easy data backups once you get your computer running again. Let us know.

[Leonardo]

You could try reseating the ribbon cable at both motherboard and hard drive connectors. Usually though, if it's a cable problem the drive is simply not detected. In this case, the drive is detected but the BIOS is indicating the drive does not function.