... And you made sure the BIOS settings were correct. Right? I'd double check them and make sure the correct parameters were set up as well as allowing "LBA" addressing mode to be used (in the BIOS settings). The problem with LBA addressing mode or even "Large" addressing mode is that you need to set up your drive's parameters under the "standard" addressing mode and THEN change to LBA (or Large) -- you'll notice the paramters change when you do this too which is OK. If you can't get your BIOS to accept the drive's parameters (under a type-47) then you probably do need a BIOS update, but that would be about the ONLY reason to do it! Your motherboards manufacturer would be able to tell you if this is a problem and if a fix is available (which would be in the form of a BIOS flash update). Typically, this is NOT a problem and updating a BIOS because of drive type limitations is NOT necessary! Undersized hard drives are usually the result of somehting else (typically, the settings are wrong).

The other thing I'd be concernesd about is if the drive was new or used. If it's used, you may have a Linux/Unix or some other OS still occupying a partition on the hard drive. And you WON'T be able to see it with the DOS FDISK program either! (some folks would call FDISK a "command" which is OK for conceptual reasons, but it's really a utility "program" that's included with MS-DOS) You can either use a Linux drive preperation utility (requiring you to use Linux) to remove the partition or low-level format the hard drive which I would advise against unless you've gone almost bald by this point -- pulling your hair out (grin).

The problem I have is that your BIOS is new enough and is of the latest BIOS "core" that 40GB should be no-sweat to allocate and use. I'd be very interested to know what make and model your hard drive was so that I or someone else even, might be able to find out if there wasn't some other problem related to your hard drive instead. Then again, it could be your controller if you don't use the embedded conroller on your motherboard. Or, perhaps you use other equipment that is interfering like a SCSI controller with something else. If your hard drive is an IDE type as I suspect, you might want to check and be sure nothing else occupies IRQ14 and IRQ15 which is where your IDE drive controllers are located. Those are just some other possabilities I can think of. However, we simply don't have enough details about your system to really make a good "guess" at what's causing your problems...