Originally posted by MOFO
I knew this would come up....

As a matter of fact, yes, a hard drive failure could prevent the bios from coming up. All depends on what is wrong with the hard drive. As I said, it is rare, but I have seen it myself. I work with alot of computers, so I see the rare and unusual problems.
I have to agree with Eric here. I work at the same company Eric works for and was in the field for 7 years before taking various other positions. I can guarantee you I've seen hard drives take a PC down. Typical hard drive failures will allow the motherboard to boot, you see the RAM check and then you get the dreaded "No O/S found" or some similar error. Not as often but I've seen hard drive crashes where nothing will happen except for a blinking cursor as soon as power is applied or sometimes nothing at all.