First of all, I'm not a super computer techie, so if you can help me, please keep the acronyms and jargon to a minimum...treat me like your grandmother who is using emial for the first time! (I'm not that bad, but still!)

I have a older Dell Latitude that won't recognize the hard drive. When I run diagnostics, I get the following:
Start DST Short Test
Test Results: Fail
Error Code: 1000-0141
Message: No Drive Detected

I googled this error and it basically sounds like I'm FUBAR. But, I thought I'd give this a shot. I have tried to run the diagnostics driver, but nothing. I keep getting a blue screen message, but it flashes so quickly I can't write anything down... something about Kernal Data and dumping memory.

I decided to forget it, just lose everything on it, delete the partition and start all over (I've had to do this once before, and until now, it worked like a charm.) Well, it won't let me delete the partition, but it won't tell me why. I tried re-installing XP again, and it won't let me do that either, again it won't tell me why.

So now, when I turn it on, I either get a black screen that tells me there is no recognizeable hard drive or and to press F1 to reboot or F12 for set-up, XP looks like it's about to start up, then a blue screen flashes and it starts to boot again, XP starts up, blue screen flashes, and so on...Why does my laptop hate me so much?! Please help if you can! Thanks!