A computer was sent back to the office because upon booting up it said "data error reading drive c....abort, retry or fail..."

I ran scandisk, but my boss turned the thing off and said just to format the hard drive. So i ran format from DOS and it said that track 0 was bad and it was unusable media.

Anyway, i got a DOS bootdisk and booted up from that and started removing files manually, and after i removed many files i rebooted with the boot disk in the floppy drive, and it said the usual starting MS-DOS message but it just stays like that for over 10 minutes.

When i held down the power off button i got the following beep message : 1 long followed by 4 short beeps.

Is my hard drive completely goosed as i suspect? Can i just swap out for another hard drive? Also, i cannot seem to get into the BIOS and would i be able to do anything useful from there? I've tried holding down the usual Function keys, but no joy.

Thanks in advance.

Try LOW level format specially designed for the make and model of your HDD. Try manufacturer's web site for such program. Do not use any other LOW level format utility as it may damaged your HDD beyond any repairs.

As far as track Ø bad error is showing up, your HDD is gone. But you can try Disk Manager utility to start re-partitioning your disk. Do it manually and start partition from track 1.

find the bios guide for your bios, e.g award or a ami, or other