Thanks to both of you. Your input helped. This was the deal - I was using an outdated BIOS for my onboard HPT 370 controller. There was an updated bios that specifically enabled lba 48-bit support, or support for drives greater than 137GB. After I flashed, which also included a mobo bios flash, set everything up in the Abit Bios, and then had a look in the HPT Bios, the drive now showed as 160GB! But since I had already formatted it for 137GB partition, I had to blow this away and let the WD dos tools re-recognize it and then set a new partition.
Some notes, the Windows version of WD tools NEVER recognized a WD drive attached to the system, but the dos version did. Go figure. The intructions and all the warnings say to use the Windows utility, especially under XP SP1. The windows software also crashed repeatedly.
The links you provided definietely helped, as my ASPI layers was outdated and I think I f-up the registry trying to add my own d-word value, so I deleted it and let the Maxtor utility do it for me which confirmed successful. All in all, the total combination of things got me right in the end.
Man - I used to be able to add/change hdds with my eyes closed!
Thanks again for all your help, I do not post much here anymore, but when I need some tech advice, I know where to go. I hope the search engine here finds this and helps others.
LJ
