Trouble booting up after HD failure - 1405-S171

I have a Satellite laptop, model 1405-S171.  I think my hard drive just failed, but I don't seem to be able to boot up from the recovery CDs that came with my computer.  Where can I find information on how to do that?  I'm running Windows XP Home.
Here's the long version:  I left my laptop on for a few hours, and when I came back to it I had a black DOS screen with the message "HDD password".  I never had put in a hard drive password, so I had no idea what to put in.  I tried rebooting, but it always came back to the "HDD password" message (after showing the "Toshiba" screen, but no "Windows" screens come up).  I tried just hitting "enter", tried entering a password I'd written down on the cover of my "Resource Guide" when I got my computer, and a few others, but nothing worked.
I have the Toshiba system recovery discs I got with my computer, and put Disk 1 in the CD drive and rebooted.  Same thing.  I read in a forum to try holding down the "c" key when rebooting.  The computer just beeped, and when the "HDD password" screen came up, the password field was full, like it had just entered a bunch of "c"s in the password line.
I read on a forum that some Toshiba laptops will give the "HDD password" message when the hard drive fails, and there are some rather involved ways to fix this, involving updating the BIOS software.  I don't know if this is applicable to my computer, and even if it is, I can't apply it unless I can get it to boot up off of something else besides the hard drive.
I have an external hard drive, and I did a backup using Acronis True Image just a week ago, so I think I'm okay if I can get the computer to boot up.
I am not a super computer whiz, though, so if the solution is too involved, I will just probably have to take it to someone.  I'd like to know if the information on how to deal with this is out there, so I can deal with it myself if its not too hard, or at least give a professional something to start with.  I am resigned that if I want to use this computer again, I'll probably need to get a new hard drive, though.
Thanks
cdhans123

    Jim, administrator.    I hope that you get this.   You wrote :
  All Toshiba laptops ship with the ability to run the system recovery process from a hard disk partition.
    Maybe they ship with this partition but after getting a 300 D with Vista and a free CD to upgrade to W 7, I did and I do not have that recovery partition.  Not that I need it now that the upgrade CD is well kept and I can find it in a jiffy or two. On top of this, I image my Toshiba at least once/month.
          My question is : why would the free CD not make this recovery partition for the less knowledgeable users. Did I miss a step when using this free CD ? With an image, it is just as good if not better than the recovery partition, I do not go back to "out of the box" condition. I could have kept that partition but it would have been going backward and not in baby steps.
     Have a great day and thanks for your dedication here.           JP.

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