Thank you AlaricD & Rapmaster.
Today I did replace the battery, and at the suggestion of the Tech Help I talked to at the store I bought it from, I left the battery our for more than 2 hours before I put the new one in. That did reset the BIOS ( he said to the factory condition).
I asked about bringing my hard drive in to have it tested, and he said it would take about 2 hours at 60 bucks per hour.
I don't think so.......
He also suggested that I try disconnecting all drives, unplugging everything, blow it out with compressed air, and starting the computer with all drives disconnected, then turn it off and re-connect the drives.
When I did that and started the computer again with all drives connected, I got a message saying "hard drive needs to be partitioned before it can be used. Do you want to create partition now? Y/N". I pushed Y and enter. That took me straight to FDISK, and it was the usual FDISK Menu selection. I did answer yes to "enable large disk support" and right now it says "verifying drive integrity" I'm not sure how long that takes, but I'll let you know what happens next.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed.