Operating system not found on Sony Vaio PCG 671L

Sony Vaio 13" PCG 671L
Operating system not found
This really nice Laptop was working just fine, before I shut it down and stored for a couple of month.

last night I tried to boot it up after the SONY Logo screen all I got is the Operating system not found, thing.. (I'm runing WXP Pro Sp2)
Here is what I tried out:

I rebooted the machine and got into the BIOS setup.
The Hdd was clearly recognized as the 60gb drive 0
the boot order is set to first cd,
then Hdd.

I then rebooted and tried to reimage (with Norton Ghost)
Norton Ghost booted just fine but,
to my surprise! It didn't see the Hdd or the partition where my images are stored.

So I took out the 60gb Pata Hdd and replace it with a used and working 40gb hdd.
and again the BIOS see the 40gb drive but Ghost or Acronis don't see it.
I also pooled out my Simms cleaned and reinserted them,
still the same thing:
operating system not found.
I've chance the Bios Boot setting to first boot to Hdd first. that didn't help either.
I'm running out of option here
any suggestion

Try running the hard drive diagnostic utility. I assume your laptop doesn't have a floppy drive, so the best thing to do is to download this and burn it to CD, it has all those utilities plus many more besides:

Ultimate Boot CD