PII gives problem with 40 gb, Pine motherboard

Hi all,

I had a 40 gb hard disk on my PII machine. While trying to install a
new AGP card, some settings (probably in BIOS) got corrupted...as a
result, the machine refused to detect my disk saying - Operating system
not found. I got the disk replaced.

But still the problem persists.
My bios is able to detect 32 gb and I can start installing XP (I had XP
earlier, on my 40 gb disk), XP is able to format, partition and do all
of its ministrations until it asks me to reboot. And then it tries to
boot from C:\ and gives the same error - Operating system not
found...which brings me to the conclusion that the problem is that the
bios is unable to correctly 'talk' to the hard disk.

The possible solutions I could think of are:
1. Bios upgrade
2. Experimenting with jumper setting on my seagate barracuda that says
32 gb limit
3. Specifying the hard disk geometry manually instead of autodetect in
the bios setup program.

My BIOS details are -
Award Modular Bios v4.51 PG
Award Software
2a69kpck TL -ZX21 1MBMX
7/29/99

Using wimbios.com, I figured out from the string 2a69kpck that my
chipset is Intel 440BX/ZX (the 2a69k part), and my mobo manufacturer is
Pine (the pc part). Pine's website is utterly hopeless when it comes
to support,...looking at the site one can not even conclude they make
motherboards ==> all attempts to figure out the upgrade file seem
blocked.

But I am still hopeful ---because the board has already supported a 40
gb disk..So the problem may not lie in the bios. Actually the earlier
disk was installed by a hardware professional, who I doubt, tinkered
with the HDD detection and geometry settings..

I have some other ideas too..please comment on these
a. Can I use a smaller hard disk (4 gb) as master...so that bios is
happy and then have a 40 gb slave
b. Instead of xp, will win 98 help (I doubt it, because this doesnt
seem to be a s/w issue)
c. As an alternative to idea a. can i get around the problem by having
the 40 gb disk as a usb harddrive (by using an external casing)

Any ideas will be most welcome...

Thanks

Amit