@ddp - yeah i deleted the partition and created a new one but only the 31gigs showed up @dailun - the jumper is definitely not set; i'll need to borrow or buy an ohm meter to test the pins though...
Does your BIOS show the drive capacity when the PC boots up? I believe that the BIOS scan looks at what the HW is reporting and not partitioning. An internal short of the alternate capacity jumper is admittedly a stretched, but you have received good suggestions from knowledgable people that haven't panned out, so when the reasonable things don't work, I look at the unreasonable (but possible) things. Alternately, if you have a low level disk utility, look at the LBA reporting or drive geometry report.
