Hard drive and CDROM not recognized in BIOS

[Cobra18T]

I have a Dell Optiplex GX1 that a friend gave to me so could intall Windows on it. I was going to put Windows98 on it because it is a few years old so i made a boot disk and had the operating system on a CD. I could never get it installed though because the BIOS would not recognize the hard drive or the CDROM. Then I decided to ask one of my other friends for an XP system restore disk. He gave it to me and I tried that too, but it just spent hours scanning for devices. I left the computer on for a day on the bios screen and tried that restore disk and it worked finally. I installed XP and it was working great. I gave the disk back to my friend and it was still working. I was about to give the computer back to the person that I had got it from when I tried to boot up again and it would not recognize the hard drive or the CDROM again. It seems very odd to me that the fixed disks will only work off and on. Now the hard drive is not even spinning up at startup. I cannot reinstall Windows either because the BIOS will not recognize the CDROM. Everything just keeps going in circles. I was wondering if the hard drive is dead, the controller is fried, or if my power supply is just too weak. Any suggestions, tips, or questions are very welcome.

 

[SYAR2003]

Weak powersupply is worth to check out first i think.
A HDD/CDD not spinning up sometimes sounds like lack of power .

 

[Cobra18T]

I will check out the power supply but the CD is spinning up, just not the hard drive.

 

[SYAR2003]

Drive gets hot maybe..

 

[Cobra18T]

I finally decided to spend the forty bucks to get a new 40G hard drive and now the computer works with absolutely no problems. Guess the hard drive was dead.