check cable fault

[buelowj]

hey there guys. ever since i got back from iraq my computer had been acting up on me by giving me the blue screen of death. i was always able to get past it though by rebooting my computer and it would simply just go away. although recently while i was using the computer in Microsoft Word, the blue screen of death appeared. so i restarted the computer and it came up with a fault:
PXE-E61 media test failure. check cable

so i took apart the computer and, to me, nothing seemed to be loose. my computer is a gateway laptop running on Windows XP home edition. i don't have the startup disk anymore but i do have a vista home basic dvd. so i tossed that in and tried to repair the computer with that and it gave me this Problem SIgnature:
problem event name: startupreapairV2
problem signture 01: externalMedia
problem signture 02: 6.06001.18000.0.0.0.0
problem signture 03: 0
problem signture 04: 65537
problem signture 05: unknown
problem signture 06: corruptMbr
problem signture 07: 0
problem signture 08: 1
problem signture 09: fixMbr
problem signture 10: 87
OS version: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033

i'm stumped at what to do next. i've tried getting XP disks to see if that would help but all the leads that i've come across have turned up with nothing. i tried to install Vista Basic onto the computer to simply wipe everything out and start fresh but it wouldn't even let me do that. When installing it couldn't find any drivers. anything to help would be greatly appreciated. thank you
Josh

[glc]

Sounds like the hard drive has failed.