I have only built one computer so far, but I have spent enough time researching to know that there are some very knowledgeable people here.

I am trying to build my daughter her own computer from some old stuff so she is not bugging me every 5 min. to play 'Sims' or email her friends! She is 10 and an awesome kid, so you would really be helping HER out...(violins in the background, etc). I know, I know, kinda brings a tear to my eye too. OK, sorry if Im incoherent, was up til 4am trying to figure this out.

I have an old Soyo sy-5ema mobo with k6-III 400. It posts fine, but won't recognize the hdd (maxtor 40g - model 4d040h2). I try to use autodetect in bios and the info (cylinders, heads etc) is not correct. It will not let me enter this myself manually. When try to boot up everything looks fine and then error message "disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter".

Tried swithing IDE plugs and even using old pci IDE card. Oh yeah, when I try to format disk with software from hdd the program just stops and leaves me hanging with an A prompt. And ran a testing program from Maxtors website and everthing 'passed' except 'bios extension support', but the testing program recognizes hdd properly.

so...I flashed the bios with latest from soyo, and no change. I'm out of ideas.

At this point it is a matter of not giving up more than saving $. I would appreciate any help whatsoever...Thanks in advance...

This is a known problem with pre-2000-vintage BIOSes. They cannot recognize hard drives larger than 32 GB -- but all is not lost. 40 GB drives, Maxtor included, can be strapped via jumpers to 32 GB, thus usable in these systems. See this link on capacity limitation for more information.

you could try the manufacturer of the mobo or the bios to get an updated version of the bios software. I have an Asus P2B-F mobo and it would only see up to a 8.4 gig hard drive thus it caused a problem because I had just received a 40 gig for christmas. My dad went to either Asus's or award bios's website downloaded the update and installed it in DOS. BUT BEWARE! this should be done by a PRO. If you mess up the BIOS your mobo is done.