New hard drive, PC won't start

I have an HP pavilion S5100NX that has Windows XP Home installed. I'm an IT Dummy and only know enough to use a computer and occasionally foul something up. Most of the terms used such as BIOS etc. I don't know what they mean or how they work within a computer.

Having said that, there were a few times when I called HPs support with a serious problem and the person on the line said, something like, "uh oh, you need to do a complete system recovery. I know enough only that I'd have to go through a lot to back up all my files, email addys, desktop shortcuts and icons etc.

So I'd decline their generous suggestion that I go do that first and then they'd help me do a system recovery. So I'd start poking around, do a bit of online searching for help and VERY luckily, solve the problem myself.

But this time, I'm really stuck.

My hard drive eventually started to squeal and I new it was time to get another. So I saved all the important stuff to my slave drive. From there, I was given a completely new driver with XP loaded and ready to go. It was a relatively new drive that had a system recovery done to it. I saw it run on the donors computer and all looked just fine.

So I take out the old drive and plug in the new. I'm aware that the jumpers, master and slave have to be set correctly.

So when I do that, turn it on and I get the Compaq screen with a line at the bottom that says, "F1 Setup and F10 System recovery". But what happens is that this screen simply disappears and comes on again, round and round in a loop.

I've found that some problems can be solved by unplugging the strip connectors and plugging them back in to reset the contacts. No luck there but when I left the floppy unconnected, I got a screen with the title, "Award BIOS" , after the aforementioned screen lights up for a bit. On this screen, which is black with white text, is listed all the drives I have installed. the hard drive, secondary drive, DVD drive and floppy but there it says, "Floppy disks fail" Which figures, I have it disconnected.

At the bottom of that screen, it says,

Press F1 for setup, Press F2 to continue.

When I press F2, I get the Compaq screen again which simply comes back to the black screen.

When I press F1, I get A screen with graphics that says, at the top,

AwardBIOS Setup Utility with the drives listed along with some other data.

II can't go any further because it's asking me for a password. I don't recall initiating any passwords here, or anywhere to get my machine going. I did a search for "BIOS passwords" and after trying some 50 or more, still no luck, stuck in this screen.

I brought the drive back to the donor and all works fine on his machine. When I plug in my old drive, I get the same results as my new drive. The donor, unfortunately, is as computer unsavy as me.

I would have included screen shots but the files are too big. Don't know how to overcome that.

????? Need help please !!!!!!!!