Installing XP on a pre-loaded Vista PC

thewildpig

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I just bought a Compaq SR5518F PC. It comes pre-loaded with Vista, but since I don't like Vista, I formatted and loaded XP Home Edition on it. Everything works well. I got all the drivers, but there is one problem. My hard drive is a 250 GB SATA drive. XP thinks my hard drive is only 128 GB. I suspect that this issue has to do with the drive being SATA and not IDE. Is there a work-around? Thanks.
 
you need to use windows update or go to the harddrives manif. Website and look for patches or updates.
 
You need to install Service Pack 2 for Windows to recognize the rest of the drive. It's a Windows limitation, nothing involving your computer. Actually Service Pack 3 is out at this time but it will work the same as far as that goes. Here is a link to download it.
 
Actually, I had SP2 installed, and the drive still was showing up as 128 GB. Perhaps installing a copy of XP with Service Pack 2 already on the CD would do it, because I can tell you that installing SP2 separately did nothing. I've thought about buying an OEM version of XP SP2 to see if that would solve things. The one I have now is the original home version from 2002.
 
Actually, I had SP2 installed, and the drive still was showing up as 128 GB. Perhaps installing a copy of XP with Service Pack 2 already on the CD would do it, because I can tell you that installing SP2 separately did nothing.

That's new. I have a stock copy of Windows XP Professional that I had to install the service packs for, and adding Service Pack 2 made the computer see the entire 320 GB except for the usual few gigabytes that you lose from formatting.

Check this support file from Microsoft I found with other instructions. I have never done this but it's worth trying. Let me know if you have further problems. :)
 
Why not trying to install SP3 to see if that does anything? It can't do any harm, I believe that it just installs updates and doesn't do any big modification to your computer.
 
I'll try loading SP3. I can easily switch from Vista back to XP. I have created backups using Acronis True Image of my PC with Vista and my PC with XP. I'll keep you posted.

Update. I just went into disk management in XP, and I am able to see the full capacity of the drive, but only in disk management. 127.99 GB and another 104.90 GB of unallocated space. How do I move the unallocated space over to the C: partition for use there?
 
I'll try loading SP3. I can easily switch from Vista back to XP. I have created backups using Acronis True Image of my PC with Vista and my PC with XP. I'll keep you posted.

Update. I just went into disk management in XP, and I am able to see the full capacity of the drive, but only in disk management. 127.99 GB and another 104.90 GB of unallocated space. How do I move the unallocated space over to the C: partition for use there?

You need to fully partition the drive wich inorder to do this you may have to install Xp again. The best way i found to do this is acutally using the Xp setup utilitly when its loaded from the bios. in there you can delete the already partitioned space and partition it all to reconize as one big drive.

cody
 
^ Nope.

Use Gparted to simply resize the hardrive.Just make sure it's set to LARGE in the BIOS Otherwise you might get some disk read errors when trying to boot off of it.
 
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