BIOS Updates forum

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.

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

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!

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.