Hey Guys its me again. I tried resetting the jumpers but that didn't make any difference. Then I tried to use the recovery CD thinking that maybe I had to used that after I reset the jumpers. The computer still reads about 32GB of memory instead of 250GB and worse yet somehow I got all this adware/spyware junk on my computer. When I did the recovery it told me it was going to repartition the drive but it did not say anything about reformatting. Do I need to reformat the whole drive and then put my recovery stuff back on there? Will that change the reading on the hard drive. It also said the first 15GB would be for Drive C and the remaining hard drive would be Drive D. But Drive D in Disk management only reads about 10GB. Then theres a 6 GB recovery section. Any help at all would be appreciated since hard drives are definately not my strongest area of computing. Also anybody know how to get rid of all this crappy spyware/adware. Norton just tell me it can't delete it and I need to manually delete it but there's so much on there it will take forever so I didn't know if there was some kind of univeral remover. Here's my original question which states my computer info: I bought a new computer a few months ago. Its a Sony VAIO PCV-RZ50C desktop. It has a P4, 3.4GHz CPU, 2GB RAM and a 250 GB hard drive. The other day I was moving some files and I checked my free space/used space in My Computer. It says that I only have 33GB hard drive. I checked in the BIOS and it states the same thing. I tried reinstalling the system with my recovery disks but it still says 33GB. I checked the hard drive itself and it says its a 250GB hard drive. I am fairly knowledgable about computers but don't know a lot about hard drives, partitioning and formatting. Could anyone tell me whats wrong and how to fix the problem.

eep... Errrm reinstall XP and take the 'nerf it all' option. recreate your system partition (around 10 gig should do it) then once you are back up , patch like crazy befroe hitting disk manager to create a partition and format the other 240 GB. Alternatively, ring sony up and shout at them... Surely the PC came with a 1 year warrenty? Send it back and let them fix it... If at 1st you don't succeed... Hit it with a big stick

I heard somewhere that WinXP only recognizes drives upwards to about 150gb or somewhere around there, how that is i have no idea. I heard that haveing the SP2 upg solves this problem. You might be able to search on the net for this, or someone in here might be able to clarify, and sorry if i gave you the wrong information. This could be on of the reasons why.

Your hard drive may be FAT file system. In My Computer, Right click the drive, then Properties, then it will show the File System. Western Digital Service and Support When there, under "Search Knowledge Base", click "Size Limitation". Then read some of the articles.

Chuck - wouldn't disk admin still be able to see all the remaining free disk space in your senario though? I wonder if the BOIS has been messed with and the system genuinely thinks tha tit has a 33GB HDD. Might be worth doing a manual redetect in the BIOS? Set the type to auto (if it's not already). can you remember ever seeing all 250GB of space? Was the machine shipped with the wrong drive installed perhaps? If at 1st you don't succeed... Hit it with a big stick

XP that has no Service Pack installed, will have a barrier of 137GB. SP1 fixes that problem. Installing SP2 does that too. How to Obtain the Latest Windows XP Service Pack Detailed Windows XP Service Pack 2 installation walkthrough The hard disk space requirements for Windows XP Service Pack 2

I'm not certain if this answer your question but let's review MSKB 301340 here: You cannot format a volume larger than 32 gigabytes (GB) in size by using the FAT32 file system. Windows XP can mount and support FAT32 volumes larger than 32 GB (subject to the other limits), but you cannot create a FAT32 volume larger than 32 GB by using the Format tool or Windows XP Setup. If you need to format a volume that is larger than 32 GB, use the NTFS file system to format it. Another option is to start from a Microsoft Windows 98 or Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Me) Startup disk and use the Format tool included on the disk. i_XpUser