Hard drive or OS disc?

[theDreamer]

Have a computer at my office where I thought the hard drive died since I could not load into Windows and nothing showed up in the BIOS, I ran the Windows XP disc just to see if I could re-install the OS or do some repairs and it kept saying no hard drive present error, so I got a new hard drive. Now the BIOS sees the hard drive but I still get the same error from the Windows XP disc.

Now I just used this same disc at the office to re-install XP on another machine the day before and I only moved it from one PC to another and saw no scratches or problems.

Thoughts?

 

[GreenGoose]

It could be the controller on the motherboard is borked.

 

[theDreamer]

It could be the controller on the motherboard is borked.

Also of note, this is a Dell dekstop.
It has four SATA ports (DVD drive uses IDE) and I attempted to use two and neither changed the end result. Also have a new SATA cable just to make sure it was not the cable. It could be the board but I wonder why it shows up in the BIOS though.