Hard disc suddenly not recognised on hp 625 laptop

[rgvkid]

hi all,

i have an hp 625 laptop which ive had for a month or so.went to power it up yesterday (working perfectly the night before,powered down properly etc.) and no joy 8 (

i get a windows logo briefly then it just restarts with same again.

if i use my windows recovery disc which came with it,it gets as far as setup and asking where you want to install windows,but no hard disc shows up !! so it wont install to a disc it cant see.

so cant even get windows to boot up to get my stuff off etc.

any help much appreciated,

cheers,

col

ps at the moment,i am trying to use hp's own hard disc checking tool (when you press escape at startup) and it is certainly taking forever to check something !no conclusion yet tho

 

[rgvkid]

quick update,it says "non system disc or disc error" when i try to start.
also used hp's own tools (escape key at startup) and it didnt come up with any errors (despite lengthy hard disc scan)
also it's on windows 7 pro
cheers