40GB Hard Disk not detected

[johnpmt]

I have bought a 40GB Hitachi Hard Disk to use with my HP Pavilion N3290 Laptop which is running on 6GB currently with WinXP.
Sadly I found that the bios recognizes only 8GB of the disk and hence the disk does not boot up with Windows.
I guess it is because the BIOS does not support >8GB. My BIOS details are as follows.

BIOS Date: 10/10/99
BIOS Type: PhoenixBIOS 4.0 Release 6.0
BIOS ID: Hewlett-Packard HP Pavilion Notebook PC BIOS Version: DC.M1.14
OEM Sign-On: None
Chipset: Intel 440BX/ZX rev 3
Superio: NSC 338 rev 2 found at port 398h
OS: WinXP
CPU: Pentium III 500 Mhz MAX: 500 Mhz
BIOS ROM In Socket: No
BIOS ROM Size: 512K
Memory Installed: 192 MB
Memory Maximum: Unknown
Memory Slot 01: 128 MB
Memory Slot 02: 64 MB

Could you advise me a possible BIOS upgrade. I would be very thankful for that. I somehow need my new 40GB hard disk to work.

Thanks.

[edwin]

If HP has no upgrades you can try http://www.esupport.com but that will cost money.

[cp]

first check the HP site for updates as already recommended by edwin.
if they don't have any update for your notebook you might try the following:
using the WiXP setup create a partition within the limited space that the bios recognizes, as in your case: 8GB. install WiXP AND SP2 (8GB should be more than enough to perform all those tasks). after you installed SP2 set up the rest of the HDD (~32GB in your case) as a new partition. that's where your data and all the programs should go. finished!

[johnpmt]

Thanks for the ideas. I will try. I have tried in HP. I used HP System Check Tool in their website. It says my system is perfect and it does not show any bios update.
I will try the other idea.

Meanwhile I have also sent a mail to esupport, but no reply from them yet.

Thanks guys.