scandisk

How large is the hard drive? You can not use hard drives larger than 128 GB with Win98. If the BIOS fails to detect the correct size, you're out of luck already anyway. Just use a smaller one.

Maybe you can update the bios to a later version with "no" limitation (all pcs made before 2003 are limited to 128GB at best because of hardware limitation, unless you install a IDE controller)

western digital 120gb drive.
so all 128gb limits need not apply.

Cobra42898 wrote:

is there a 64gb bios limitation?

A 32GB limitation would not be surprising. I wonder if you've simply hit that, and the BIOS is showing a junk figure as it tries & fails to process the HDD.

Check if your HDD has a jumper option to limit it to 32GB. Don't think it does though.

i don't know of 64gb limitation, but most older boards have a limitation of 128gb(prior to and including intel p2x4e southbridge).
also i had trouble in both win98 and 2000 with harddrives over 128gb even with newer boards. they would work after installing corresponding ide drivers, but only winxp has which built-in, and there is no chance to get win98/2000 running to get the driver installed.

This HP board is most probably limited to 32GB. Check over at WimsBIOS, whether those guys and gals have a patched version of the BIOS that allows up to 128GB. Had to do the same with my HP from the same era (Vectra PIII-550, as well as on the PII-450, Boards were based on 440ZX and BX) You also need to do this even if you only plan on using 32GB (locking the max size on the HDD itself, as the board still need to be patched to even initialize these drives correctly)

EDIT: According to the net, the 4550z is indeed based on the Intel 440ZX chipset. Like all 440ZX based SFF boards from HP back then, it is limited to 32GB HDD size. Circumventing this may only be possible with either a BIOS update or Overlay software. I have not found any updated BIOSes for this board that feature a HDD size fix, though.