I recently built my own computer, using a 160gb WD hard drive. I installed an old version of windows xp professional without any of the service packs on said hard drive. as expected, it only registered as 137gb because I lacked 48bit LBA etc..... So I downloaded the latest drivers for my ABIT NF7-S MB and installed service pack 1a for the OS, which I thought was all that was necessary to overcome this problem. When this didn't work, I installed a hotfix from the MS website to update my ATAPI driver to version xxx.xx.1135 which I thought was sufficient, but still no luck. When I boot up my computer, the hard drive registers as 160gb, so I dont think its a MB or controller driver issue. When I get into windows is when the problem occurs, making me think its still an OS problem. I am out of ideas on how to solve this, any help would be greatly appreciated.

One thought springs to mind. fdisk the drive as two drives C:\ and D:\ Say C 130Gb and D 30 GB. But will think harder on it. :)

Are you looking in Disk Management? You will have to partition the unpartitioned space and format it from there after applying the SP.

Never tried it but check out ranish.com.Free. Partition Magic 8.0 is what many use.