Compaq 4504 hdd upgrade not working

I am new owner of a Presario 4504 (a dubious honor) and am tying to install a
20g drive in place of the factory installed (5") 2g unit. Besides the
mounting being different, it does not recognize the OS and fails to boot. The
new drive is loaded w/XP

How do I tell The System that there is a new drive out there? Can I access a
setup screen? Does Compaq still need a proprietary setup disk?
Thanks,
Jim

Very likely that unit has an 8GB BIOS limit. You'll have to use overlay
software to trick the BIOS into seeing all of the HDD. I assume you have to
load the overlay before loading any OS on the HDD. Someone correct me if I'm
wrong--I admit I've never tried to install a large HDD with an OS and then
tried to install an overlay--always started with a blank drive.

And even with the overlay you may have F1 through an HDD error every time you
boot...

Dale

Dale,

I believe you're right on both counts. 8GB limit in the BIOS, overlay
software before the OS.

Tom
"DEJ57" wrote in message
...
Very likely that unit has an 8GB BIOS limit. You'll have to use overlay
software to trick the BIOS into seeing all of the HDD. I assume you have
to
load the overlay before loading any OS on the HDD. Someone correct me if
I'm
wrong--I admit I've never tried to install a large HDD with an OS and then
tried to install an overlay--always started with a blank drive.

And even with the overlay you may have F1 through an HDD error every time
you
boot...

Dale