If you know much about computers, I need your help.

Let’s start with the backstory: I have a homebuilt machine (my last homebuilt machine) that a friend and I put together a couple of years ago (stats listed below). We ghosted his hard drive to get me up and running quickly. Note: I already had the same applications on CD with the exceptions of some games that I didn’t play and a bunch of MP3s that I didn’t like.

I created my own admin user account and left the original one alone. My plan was to setup my workspace and all of my saved files from my last machine the way I wanted, pick and choose anything I wanted to keep from the ghosted account, and then wipe the ghosted account.

I didn’t actually get around to deleting the other account until very recently. I realized it had been a long time since I had pulled any files out of it and I went ahead and killed it. Then I started playing Civilization IV. Great game. And one that my machine should have been able to handle without a problem. However, when playing on a large map my computer would slow to a crawl. I took to reading magazines while waiting for it.

That was not an acceptable solution. I checked on the RAM usage and determined that my test web server running Apache, PHP, and MySQL was consuming some resources. So I could kill those before playing the game. I defragged the hard drive for the first time in two years. Then I ran error-checking on the disk. This is when things went horribly, horribly wrong.

The computer restarted to run the check, steps one, two and three went off without a hitch. When it got to step four it rewrote the file ID for every system file. When the computer finally finished the check and booted up everything went haywire:

• The windowing system doesn’t work properly anymore. Minimizing windows now looks like the old Windows 3.1 (or Photoshop) where the window minimizes to the lower left of the application window which, in this case, is the desktop.
• I can no longer save files or copy files, including copying them to CD, floppy, USB drive, or the hard drive.
• The computer no longer shows up on my local network.
• Some applications no longer run.
• No audio — it doesn’t recognize that there are any audio devices.
• Can’t view device details in Device Manager.
• It doesn’t recognize that there is a hard drive.

That last one is the key to everything, I just don’t know how. When I boot from a Windows CD to repair or re-install the OS, Windows doesn’t recognize that there is a hard drive. When I go into the BIOS (Phoenix Award BIOS v7.8) it doesn’t recognize that there is a hard drive either. Keep in mind, things were pretty much fine until the error-check rewrote the file IDs. It may have done something else too but that was the only thing it reported when it ran. How in the Hell could that possibly affect the BIOS?

Does anybody have any idea how to fix my computer?

Other notes:

• The computer did have one problem prior to this whole fiasco: it only worked on every other boot. The in-between boots either booted completely but froze or simply didn’t recognize input devices like my mouse and keyboard. I rarely rebooted it, so that wasn’t a major concern for me at the time.
• I upgraded the BIOS from 7.0 to 7.8 but it didn’t help or even change anything.
• The processor has never ran at full clock speed. In the BIOS it showed up as a 1.67Ghz processor instead of 2Ghz. After updating the BIOS it now shows up as something really low (1.27Ghz I think).

Hardware Profile:

• OS: Windows XP Pro SP2 (latest patches applied)
• Motherboard: K7N2 Delta-ILSR (MS-6570-030)
• Processor: AMD Athlon 2600+
• Hard Drive: 120GB SATA
• Video Card: nVidia GeForce4 Ti 4800 SE
• CD-R: Plextor CD-R PX-W4824A
• DVD: Sony DVD-Rom DDU1621

I can’t view properties via device manager, so some items I can’t get the full details on without pulling them out of the computer altogether. I’m not opposed to doing that, but at this point I haven’t gotten to it. If someone wants that info to help me troubleshoot, I’m more than happy to get it.

P.S. Don’t mock the hardware, it’s three years old and was built on a budget. I’m not replacing it until I buy a high-end Intel Mac that can run both operating systems (OS X and either XP Pro or Longhorn). I’m planning to put 1.5GB RAM into it and run Windows via Virtual PC and have both OSs running simultaneously. I can’t do that right now though, so I need to get this machine working again.

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