Cause:  This can have two causes.

First, you must have a BIOS on your motherboard that fully supports 48-bit LBA mode.  Check with manufacturer's website. 

Second, by default the 48-bit Logical Block Addressing (LBA) support for ATAPI disk drives is not enabled in Windows XP Pro or Home (as described in this article: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q303013) 

It is also not enabled in Windows 2000 (as described in this article http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q305098)

Using the resolution below you can add the drive as a secondary drive and get a full partition size.  For example the 250 GB drive will format to 233 GB.  However if you want to actually install Windows 2000 or XP on the drive you have to create a smaller partition (131 GB or less) then do the updates then you can have access to remaining hard drive space in Disk Management.

Windows 95, 98, ME, and FDISK also have this limit but there is NO RESOLUTION, and they also do not support NTFS volumes, only FAT32, so they should not be used with larger disks.

1) Update BIOS if necessary.

2) Enable the 48-bit LBA in Windows 

Install Service Pack 1 (or higher) for Windows XP Home or Professional: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/servicepacks/sp1/default.asp

Install Service Pack 3 (or higher) for Windows 2000: http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/downloads/servicepacks/sp3/default.asp

Then edit the Registry to add EnableBigLba

• Start Registry Editor (Regedt32.exe)
• Locate and then click the following key in the registry:

o        HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Atapi\Parameters

• On the Edit menu, click Add Value, and then add the following registry value:

o        Value name: EnableBigLba
Data type: REG_DWORD
Value data: 1

• Quit Registry Editor.
• Reboot system.