[D3v0ur3r]

I have a 300 GB HD that I had put Vista on initially. Had some issues gaming & decided to try XP to see if the issues showed up on XP in an effort to determine if the issues were hardware related. But when I went to format the HD for XP I noticed the file size wasn't 300GB, it was 127GB. I also didn't see any other partitions on the drive. Is Vista using WinFS file system while XP uses NTFS & XP on install can't see it? If yes can anyone recommend a way to delete the Vista partition? I don't see the options for formating when trying to install Vista.

Currently using XP again & intend to keep using it for now but I would like to figure out why I old formated 127gb & not 300 when I installed XP. Btw the bios reports the HD properly at 300gb.

Edit: Norton Partition Magic 8.0 only supports FAT, FAT32, NTFS, Ext2, and Ext3 file systems.

[Kyyla]

Vista uses NTFS.

[D3v0ur3r]

Any idea when I deleted the partition before XP install, XP install only detected or showed 127bg available for formating? I suppose I could have edited that part (not sure that would matter either) but I've never had to in 10 years of HD formating.

[Kurt]

Originally Posted by D3v0ur3r

Any idea when I deleted the partition before XP install, XP install only detected or showed 127bg available for formating? I suppose I could have edited that part (not sure that would matter either) but I've never had to in 10 years of HD formating.

Either install SP2 or search for the registry hack that *enables big disks*



EDIT:

actually SP1 or

1. Launch regedit.
2. Open the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\Atapi\Parameters
registry subkey.
3. Add a REG_DWORD value name EnableBigLba and set its value to 1.
4. Exit regedit.
5. Reboot.

[D3v0ur3r]

This won't make any difference will it since the HD has already been formated to 127 before install?

[BRiT]

Yes. If you formatted it as 127GB, then the rest of the space will be unformatted. You may be able to expand the partition after you install the SP/RegTweak.

[D3v0ur3r]

Originally Posted by Curt

Either install SP2 or search for the registry hack that *enables big disks*



EDIT:

actually SP1 or

1. Launch regedit.
2. Open the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\Atapi\Parameters
registry subkey.
3. Add a REG_DWORD value name EnableBigLba and set its value to 1.
4. Exit regedit.
5. Reboot.

This makes a lot more sense (to me) now. The disk I used for install was a first release without any service packs. I added the reg key & used a free partition manager & sure enough, I was able to format the rest of the disk. Meh!

Btw, I found out my Vista 64 gaming issues was really a SLI issue because I had the same issues in XP. Seems either my PSU isn't enough at 750 watts for SLI or SLI is just very unstable.

Bah! This comp build has been a nightmare for me & this build was the only one in the last 10 years I didn't want to do.