570E - boot partition sizes

[slazzer]

Mornin' all ... long time since I was here.

Got an old 570E back from someone I gave it to several years ago, and trying to give it some TLC etc.

Well - it had a 10GB HD then - 2 partitions about 5GB each - with windows XP installed and activated. But I needed to swap out the HD (long story). So - because of the seeming impossibility of activating a fresh XP install, So I thought lets try to clone the 1st (system) partition to another drive - and at the same time expand that partition to a more sensible size like 20GB or so. So I did that, put the drive back in the 570E ..... "no operating system found" :-/

But - from flitting around this forum huntng for something else, I had a vague memory of seeing something along the lines of "boot partition needs to be <8GB" on some early machines (and probably early BIOSes). So - I re-imaged the drive, but this time didn't resize it, and lo and behold, the machine booted with the XP partition of about 5GB
So am I right in surmising that this 8GB limit is whats in play with this ? The BIOS currently installed is 1.05 .... latest is 1.07. Obviously I'd update the BIOS - if had a darn battery !

I know there are hack-arounds for this, but I don't fancy my chances with a floppy drive (well a floppy _disc_ really).