If you were the only individual with access to your laptop since you last used it, you have not upgraded memory or changed any hardware, then "disabled" is just that.

Try...

Disconnect power to laptop, take out the battery and physically remove the hard drive. Clean contacts in non-static material and reinstall removed components. Leave cover off of the hard drive and when powered on, listen to see if you can hear drive spinning happily.

Reset BIOS settings to default. Check to see if CDROM/DVD drive is installed as well as the hard drive in BIOS. Disable network to LAN BOOT option.

Find a mate who has similar laptop (bring along a few beers) and see if your hard drive will work in it.

hi craziestozzy, thanks so much for your responce.iv done what you have suggested iv put another formatted hdd in and thats spinning ok. but as on boot primary ide still disabled... the dvd is enabled as been always.how do i disable network to lan boot please. thanks , simon

If all the bios setting are good and the drive still does not spin-up, it could be due to "stiction". This is very RARE, but I believe I had it happen on one older machine that sat idle for almost a year. No spin-up on power-up. I removed the drive and placed it flat on a large table. Spun the drive like a top and stopped it suddenly. Placed it back into the original machine and it spun up and booted immediately. Drive worked fine for another 5 years before it became too small to be of any practical use.

Had one other drive fail to spin-up, but it was truely dead. Under warranty and replaced for free, but data loss was painful. Good luck!