HD install

You will have to check for an BIOS update for the motherbord that you have installed in the system,see the manufacturers web site,if one is available you will have to flash the bios,use the read me instructions before applying.

Check the bios version on the start up screen when booting computer

For Reference see www.badbios.com

Or use the manufacturer's diskette driver to make partitions and to format the HDD.

Your "best" option is to install a PCI IDE controller card.

Not only will the PCI card recognize the full capacity of your new drive, it will support the faster ATA 100 or 133 data transfer rate of your new drive.

With an 8GB drive size limit, your motherboard has at best an UDMA 33 data transfer rate.

So, for around $30 (US) you will at least triple your drive performance.

Not a bad deal for any PC upgrade.

As an added benefit, you will now be able to have up to 8 drives installed on the computer.

Chas

Or if you are cheap like me, divide the HD into 5 8 Gig partitions. Looks like you are running Win 98 at least, if you get the updates (after loading) it will enable LBA support and show the additional space. BIOS will still only show 8 Gig though. Using the OEM software (has only caused problems for me) I have had very little success with it on OEM type boxes (HP/Compaq/IBM)

The problem is that the BIOS chip is out of date for that current Hard Drive size, That being your BIOS chip only recognizes a maximum of 8GB instead of recognizing the whole 40GB being that its an older BIOS chip Therefore you would need to update the BIOS chip.

Most hard drive manufacturers supply software that will fool your bios into thinking it can handle the large drive. With Wester Digital is is EZ-BIOS. Go to the web site for your drive manufacturer and you should find the correct program to download. Cheap fix.