Hard Drive problem

[Anonymous]

Hi
im having a problem with a Hewlett Packard im working on. It was given to me by a friend. It has a partitoned Hard drive(identified as C:\ and F:\)
The problem is that sometimes on startup, the bios does not see the hard drive and wont boot Windows xp pro. In CMOS it does not show the Master drive. If you power down and restart and/or tinker with it a bit it will read the drive. All the pins are straight and pushed all the way in. The problem usually starts if the power cord gets unplugged. Can anyone help me here. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated

thanx

[Chip]

Are your clocks displaying the correct time? I ask this because if this is an older PC then the CMOS battery might be dying. It's a three dollar fix, but it might work.

When it doesn't work, can you hear it spin up or is it just dead?