tried to boot up my computer this AM and got the following message:
"primary master drive fails"
says to press to either:
1) pressF1 to continue which ends up a "disk boot failure" message. asks me to insert system disk (I insert my Windows XP disk and it fails to get it booted)
2) press F2 to ente "Setup" which takes me to some AwardBIOS Setup Utility page.

I really need some help here. Not sure what is going on!

If you are lucky you left a floppy in your floppy drive. If you are not lucky your hard drive has passed on. I would replace the IDE cable on the hard drive before I would do anything else. These cables can and do go bad. If after you replace cable and still get same boot error like I said before " hard drive is dead. "

. . . And it's true that a cable might have come loose. Just making sure the ends of the cables are firmly seated might make a difference.

I have also seem this with Maxtor HD's after rebooting several times in a row. I don't know if it's a power overload or some sort of protection, but eventually the drive will work again.

As a LAST resort... I have removed hard drives and wrapped them on the side (on edge). I have seen drive head "stick" in the park position and cause this trouble - usually after it has been sitting idle. Again, last resort. Also listen for noises from the drive. Do you hear it spin up? Are there any clicks? Good luck.

When you get that message press F2. When the AwardBIOS Setup Utility page comes up use the arrow keys to move to Auto detect hard drives and press enter. Wait until that is finished and press the Esc key, the F10 key and press enter. Your computer, hopefully will boot. If that works then you need to replace the battery on the motherboard.