I have a MSI 875 Motherboard, 1 GB ram pc-3500, one 40 GB
IDE HD working fine, cd, dvd and floppy.
I have no SCSI devices.
The motherboard is serial ATA capable and I have been to
the MSI website to seek new updates, etc.
I added a 250 GB Serial ATA drive.
It has no jumpers installed on the drive.
The serial cable plugs directly onto the motherboard in a
dedicated serial conection. (no serial controller card)

The BIOS serial setting is set to enable.
Windows XP see the drive but only as about a 32 GB IDE HD.
I have seen the serial controllers in Device Manager and
they say working properly.
I have updated to Win XP-SP1, then I manually went in and
did "hotfix" on Atapi.sys file and get the correct verion
installed. For some reason SP-1 did not install the newest
version file.

Then I did a "Regedit" to check to see if the
setting "EnableBigLba" was enabled and there ws no such
setting in the registery.
I manually drilled down to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Atapi\
Parameters\

and there was no EnableBigLba setting.

Please help, I have reached the limits of my hardware
knowledge and I really want this new HD to work properly.

thanks

EC wrote:
> I have a MSI 875 Motherboard, 1 GB ram pc-3500, one 40 GB
> IDE HD working fine, cd, dvd and floppy.
> I have no SCSI devices.
> The motherboard is serial ATA capable and I have been to
> the MSI website to seek new updates, etc.
> I added a 250 GB Serial ATA drive.
> It has no jumpers installed on the drive.
> The serial cable plugs directly onto the motherboard in a
> dedicated serial conection. (no serial controller card)
>
> The BIOS serial setting is set to enable.
> Windows XP see the drive but only as about a 32 GB IDE HD.
> I have seen the serial controllers in Device Manager and
> they say working properly.
> I have updated to Win XP-SP1, then I manually went in and
> did "hotfix" on Atapi.sys file and get the correct verion
> installed. For some reason SP-1 did not install the newest
> version file.
>
> Then I did a "Regedit" to check to see if the
> setting "EnableBigLba" was enabled and there ws no such
> setting in the registery.
> I manually drilled down to:
>
> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Atapi\
> Parameters\
>
> and there was no EnableBigLba setting.
>
> Please help, I have reached the limits of my hardware
> knowledge and I really want this new HD to work properly.

1) ATA capable? I would hope so. But does it support 48-bit Logical Block
Addressing Support for ATA? (Assuming yes - as you state this is a SERIAL
ATA drive?)
2) What does the BIOS see the drive as?
3) When you go into Windows and want to initialize the drive, it only sees
it as 32GB there or when you FORMAT it? Are you formatting as NTFS or
FAT32. Windows XP will only format 32GB of a drive if you use FAT32.
4) You HAVE to be SP1 to see drives that size. Re-install SP1 without the
drive connected and all other updates (critical) as well.
5) Add the registry setting manually.

--
<- Shenan ->
--

Hi,

Does the SATA HDD showed 250GB in the mobo BIOS?

How to Enable 48-bit Logical Block Addressing Support for ATAPI Disk Drives in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;303013

Peter


----- EC wrote: -----

I have a MSI 875 Motherboard, 1 GB ram pc-3500, one 40 GB
IDE HD working fine, cd, dvd and floppy.
I have no SCSI devices.
The motherboard is serial ATA capable and I have been to
the MSI website to seek new updates, etc.
I added a 250 GB Serial ATA drive.
It has no jumpers installed on the drive.
The serial cable plugs directly onto the motherboard in a
dedicated serial conection. (no serial controller card)

The BIOS serial setting is set to enable.
Windows XP see the drive but only as about a 32 GB IDE HD.
I have seen the serial controllers in Device Manager and
they say working properly.
I have updated to Win XP-SP1, then I manually went in and
did "hotfix" on Atapi.sys file and get the correct verion
installed. For some reason SP-1 did not install the newest
version file.

Then I did a "Regedit" to check to see if the
setting "EnableBigLba" was enabled and there ws no such
setting in the registery.
I manually drilled down to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Atapi Parameters\

and there was no EnableBigLba setting.

Please help, I have reached the limits of my hardware
knowledge and I really want this new HD to work properly.

thanks