Laptop reading wrong disk size

[jodisue]

I have an old excel laptop that I have been unable to install XP on due to it reading the wrong disk size. I have put a 10g in and it reads 6g. I put a 40g in and it reads 1.5g on the windows install. I think it is the IDE controller but i am not certain. The bios is very limited on this laptop and I have already tried flashing it and updating it. Is there a hardware fault on the motherboard that would cause it to read the disk size incorrectly or am i just missing something simple. The bios won't show the disk size it just shows the identifying number.

 

[RazberyBandit]

This reminds me of the days of hard disks installed in Win95 machines requiring DDO's (Dynamic Disk Overlay) be installed on the hard drive(s) to allow the system use the full capacity. Is this laptop from the time of Win95/98? If so, that might be what you need, but I haven't a clue if any manufacturers even bother with that sort of software anymore.

 

[jodisue]

Hi, nope it is not that old. It is only about 5 years old or so. It came with XP Home on it. This one has had me stumped for quite some time now. It came with a 40g HDD. Thanks for the reply tho.