What in the world is wrong with my HP laptop (or as I like to call it - "The Paperweight")?

I just got my HP laptop back after having the hard drive and the motherboard replaced. When I pulled it out of the box and fired it up, it got caught in some strange loop and Vista never started. I turned it off and when I turned it back on I pushed the F10 button to get that BIOS screen. It did some kind of a test and the results said “Missing IDE Device.” What is an IDE device and how could the HP service center manage to send back my computer without one?