Desktop with error on start up load

I am experiencing an error problem with booting on my desktop. Each time I try to start it on, on the black screen, it would appear an error message " Detecting IDE Drives…". And it would not anymore boot up or start or proceed to Windows XP. In the past, I would just press "Control + ALT + Del" and it would start up already and proceed to WIndows.
But it got worse as each day passed by. I would have to do "Control + ALT + Del" several times before it would go to Windows. If it still does not work, I would turn off the CPU and wait for several minutes before I can turn it on again. I would just keep on repeatedly do the things I mentioned to make it work. Sometimes, I get lucky that it would proceed to Windows XP. But just recently, it would not work anymore.
Even if I do it several times, the error message " Detecting IDE drives…" would still appear. I hope you can help me understand what went wrong with my computer. What do you mean by IDE drives?
There is another message above that saying EM64T CPU, is this related to the error message I've been seeing? This is so frustrating.
I hope you can help me.
