In ,
liquidous had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:

ok guys. here goes.

msi RS480M2-IL mother board
1gig ram
amd 64 3800+
maxtor SATA 300gb 6B300S0 hard drive.


when i first put this computer together from scratch, the brand new
hard drive loaded windows mce 2005 perfectlly. right out of the bag
it caught the 300gb and formatted, used the computer flawlessly for 3
weeks, then decided
i didn't want mce2005 so i blew away partition and decided to install
xp pro . ever since then, i have been unable to install xp with
anything larger than 137gb.. ive installed it, then installed the
registry fix for windows for large drive support. no luck. i did
DISKPART and it found the unallocated space, but i can't extend the
space to the current volume partition. i want to have 1 300gb c:
drive, not multiple partitions.

went to maxtor site, downloaded maxblast 4 and followed instructions.
booted from floppy - it formatted the drive and partitioned it ntsf
as 300gb said all was well and to reboot with xp pro cd in the drive.
i did it, and still
xp pro cd only sees the drive as 137gb..

do i have to install with a xp pro SP1 disc, for it to recognize it in
the setup as one huge 300gb partition, or can i install with xp pro
(no service pack) and then upgrade it to sp2 after im in windows?

bios finds the drive as 300gb auto detect no problem.. im out of
ideas.
snip

This is ME not MCE for the record. As you said the BIOS sees it, installl
SP2 (IIRC) to see the additional drive space and format it.

See also:

How to enable 48-bit Logical Block Addressing support for ATAPI ...:
http://support.microsoft.com/default...en-us%3B303013

Galen
--

"And that recommendation, with the exaggerated estimate of my ability
with which he prefaced it, was, if you will believe me, Watson, the
very first thing which ever made me feel that a profession might be
made out of what had up to that time been the merest hobby."

Sherlock Holmes