HELP

I defer to the Technology experts in the audience:

I have had a problem with my PC that used to happen once in a while and is now getting progressively worse. During bootup, the PC hangs during its drive tests. It then states that there is no Primary master disk (my hard drive) and no primary slave (the CD burner). It still locates the Secondary master (my DVD drive). It naturally reports a DISK BOOT FAILURE and when I attempt to use the Windows XP disc to restore things, it tells me that Windows cannot locate my hard drive.

Any assistance, direction would be greatly appreciated. I don;t want to send in my PC for maintenance, since I have a sneaking suspicion I'll be told to spend a lot of money replacing hardware that is not XP-compatible (Original OS was Windows 2000).