Hard disk not found after infection

Hello,
I have recently gotten a virus though I was running the updated AVG antivirus. The virus looked the same as an offical windows update notification that I clicked refuse on. Then I had the Antivirus 2009 stuff popping up on my laptop running scans. I have bought an new kiplinger anti virus and it did not correct the problem. Now as of last night, while booting, there is an error stating that the hard disk is not found. I have combed through the bios and found nothing out of the ordinary. I reset to defaults just in case and check values again, nothing.
If there is something that you are aware of that may help, please let me know, I have valuable non replaceable pictures of my recently deceased daughter on there that I just loaded and was not able to back up yet.