Pre SP1 XP install and 137 GB HDD limit

[sprtfan]

Hi,

I upgraded my mother in laws computer and have ran into a problem reinstalling XP. This was an original release with no service packs. Everything is working great but the 300GB hard drive will only show up as 127GB. I have already upgraded to XP SP3.

I found some information at Microsoft that says to edit the registry to enable 48-bit Logical Block Addressing support. The problem is I can not find the reg entry that I need to change. I need to set EnableBigLba registry value to 1 in the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Atapi\Parameters but I can not find EnableBigLba.

Did I need to do this before I installed SP3? Do I have to uninstall the service packs to be able to set EnableBigLba to 1? Is there someother way to go about doing this?

Thanks

 

[bruceb]

If that registry key does not exist, you need to create it.
Also see this link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/303013

The MS Atapi Driver must be the correct version. If it is not
download the correct one from here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/331958

 

[RebateMonger]

Best fix would have been to make a slipstreamed SP2 or SP3 XP Install CD. It's really easy to do nowadays with NLite.

With such a CD, XP would install with SP2 or SP3 already integrated and there'd be no problems with >128GB hard drives.

 

[VinDSL]

Originally posted by: sprtfan
I upgraded my mother in laws computer and have ran into a problem reinstalling XP...

Can I get your permission to use this quote as my sig?!?!?!?

 

[bruceb]

For large drives 4 conditions must be met:

1):Motherboard chipset must support 48 bit LBA .. some older ones do not
2):BIOS must support & have 48 bit LBA enabled
3):Windows XP must be at least SP1 and the 48 bit LBA reg key must exist and be set correctly
4):Windows XP requires the latest version of the Atapi Driver as referred to in KB331958

 

[Modelworks]

Also check the jumpers on the drive. Some HD have a jumper that limits the capacity so it works with older OS/bios.

 

[sprtfan]

Originally posted by: VinDSL

Originally posted by: sprtfan
I upgraded my mother in laws computer and have ran into a problem reinstalling XP...

Can I get your permission to use this quote as my sig?!?!?!?

Sure, I never expected anything I ever said to be sig worthy though 🙂

 

[sprtfan]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
Best fix would have been to make a slipstreamed SP2 or SP3 XP Install CD. It's really easy to do nowadays with NLite.

With such a CD, XP would install with SP2 or SP3 already integrated and there'd be no problems with >128GB hard drives.

I should have done this and will do this if I need to install XP again. She had purchased XP when it was released and I didn't think about it when I installed it. I could just reinstall again and do it this way. It would probably be the easiest way.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: sprtfan
I should have done this and will do this if I need to install XP again. She had purchased XP when it was released and I didn't think about it when I installed it. I could just reinstall again and do it this way. It would probably be the easiest way.

Probably. That's what I'd do. You can see the problem very early in the install when Windows examines the disk. Other than a too-old BIOS, it pretty much automatically takes care of the problem. As long as the BIOS is post-2002 or so, everything else should work automatically.

If you are willing to use a third-party partitioning software that's designed to work with Windows System partitions, you can re-partition the Windows disk to make everything a single partition. Otherwise, you can just partition and format the remaining space, making a "two-disk" system. Just install at least XP SP1 first.

 

[sprtfan]

Thanks for the help and the link to nLite. I'm making a new install disk and will just start from scratch. I can't believe I have not ran into this problem before to be honest but I haven't done many installs with XP over the last year and before then most were probably on smaller hard drives so I didn't notice.