During boot up there is a message "Primary Master Drive Fails"
then enter set up or boot from disk

Anything I can try? Is my hard drive dead?

Windows 2000
1.33mhz
512ram xxxxxxxxxxx


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You can remove it from the computer and connect it to a working computer as a slave drive to see if you can explore it.

If that is the only error message it does sound like the HD failed though.

See if the drive appears in the BIOS.

If you can get to the BIOS, do as aklan has suggeted, but also look to see if the SMART is bad.

Ok,
I tried and here is what I get......
On boot up:

Detecting Primary Master.........WDC WD400BB-32CCBO

then Primary Master Fails

In the Bios this shows
Primary Master [Auto]

Not sure what the "SMART" is

S.M.A.R.T. stands for Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology. S.M.A.R.T. technology was developed by a number of major hard disk drive manufacturers in a concerted effort to increase the reliability of drives. It is a technology that enables the PC to predict the future failure of hard disk drives. S.M.A.R.T. technology has become an industry standard for hard drive manufacturers.

If you want more information about this, there is a good article that you can find here.

The BIOS should show the status of the SMART as good or bad. When my hdd's SMART system started indicating that is was bad it would stop in the POST to make me aware of it, and had to press an F key to continue. But I have also heard of hdds dying without ever showing the warning in the POST.

I have to agree with Enthusiast, it does sound like the hdd is dead.

A good hard drive test is Hitachi's Drive Fitness Test. It will excercise the drive without changing any data. The program is available os an ISO image for a CD. It needs to be burned to a new CD using Roxio, Nero or the free CDBurnerXP Pro. To run the program restart your system with the CD in your primary optivcal drive and it will start up automatically. Navigate the menus to check out the SMART status. Then run the full analysis test.

Thanks for the advice & direction
I'm back with a new hard drive. Had not backed up for a month so that was bad :(
Thanks again!