My Toshiba Laptop HDD Dead or Laptop Itself Dead?

So I have a Toshiba Satellite L35-S2194 Laptop that I got for free from my uncle (died on him, if I can fix I can have kind of deal)

Specs:

1.66ghz Celeron

512mb RAM

80GB HDD

Etc.

In essence, it sucks but it was free and I would like to try fixing it for under $100. Basically, It will not boot.

When I boot it up it says operating system not found, PXE-E61 media test failure, check cable, PXE-M0F Exiting PXE ROM, ETC.

Hard Drive not listed in Bios.

Tried the recovery disks, First it says Loading RAMDISK image, then it says "This HDD is not initialized. Initialize HDD and restart" then "An error has occurred Error: F3E1000001 Hard Disk not Found. Press OK to turn off the computer...

I have tried a Ubuntu live CD, but it won't boot either, It gives me the error Comreset failed (errno=-16)

If it wasn't worth any money at all, I would likely chuck it out a window and feed it to my dog. But instead I decided to see If I could get some help here.

Hopefully it is just the HDD that is bad... Will pick one up at bestbuy tomorrow to test out (so I can return if it doesn't work)

Thanks for the help!

Sounds like the HDD is just bad, if you want to be sure you can pop it in another computer.

Wait, when you boot from the Ubuntu live cd it doesn't work? Then it's not related to your HDD.JigglyWiggly_