Barracuda XT, Barracuda, Barracuda Green, DiamondMax and other desktop SATA and IDE drives

[LTD]

My DELL Dimension 4550 running Windows XP desktop PC has a Maxtor DiamondMax21 160 GB master and a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 8 30 GB slave.

When powering up and trying to boot I get a blinking cursor and never get to the point when I can do a SAFE Mode boot.
I can not do F2 and F12 before getting the blinking cursor.
Tapping the F8 key does not take me to the screen where I can select SAFE Mode.

I was told in the DELL forum "more  than likely the boot sector of the harddrive is damaged or corrupt. this is what would case the system to not see it. once the bios is done posting it goes out and looks for the boot info on the drives by the order that is set in the bios. So if the boot sector is damaged or corrupted then it will not find it and will cause the blinking cursor."

I am not sure what my options are for getting these harddrives to work.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[Cantbecanit]

I think basically either you've lost a boot file and the O/S is crapped out or the drive is simply dead, try a finger on it for vibration, it's not the correct drive to be a brick,

One more thing, if your bios allows it command the boot drive to be first booter, if not just disconnect the other one, the PC could be trying to boot off the blank drive.