Question : Problem: No Fixed Disks

Hello.

Have a very strange problem. We have two different desktops (an IBM and a Gateway) that have recently been having issues. We pulled them out of the site where they were installed. A reimage was determined to be the course of action to take. Upon trying to reimage, we have been getting errors indicating that no fixed disks are present. We have tried booting from a Windows startup disk, a FreeDOS startup disk, and the Win2k cd. All with the same results. We tried replacing the hard disk in the IBM...same result.

The tricky thing about this whole situation is...within the last month or so, there was a security breach in the site where these pcs were housed. Basically, we're talking about a very high risk location given the field my employer is in (can't be helped). What happened (allegedly) is that an unauthorized person brought in an outside pc and tapped into one of our network patch panels. I'm not security certified, or well versed in forensics. However, upon a CURSORY check of installed program, I discovered some tools that could potentially be used for malicious purposes.

My question is this: Is it possible that some type of home-made or easily available utility could have been used to corrupt the BIOS of each of these machines?

Answer : Problem: No Fixed Disks

Not likely.  More probable is the CMOS battery is dying or the BIOS got some strange values in it - try fixing it by resetting the BIOS.  Sometimes, a little static shock is all it takes to knock them out of kilter; don't jump to conclusions.