Question: I found a very very old laptop in my garage (Acer Travelmate 613TXV) and I'm curious about how well it will work. My skills are above average but when I try to install Windows XP on it (on a 4 GB HDD from a friend) the laptop says that the HDD has 14000 MB and I can't format it. 

I put the HDDon my laptop, formatted it, then made a partition. When I insert it in the old laptop it tells me that it has 14000 MB unallocated space and cannot be formatted.

Is there a hardware problem on that laptop? I installed Windows XP on older laptop than this and didn't have any problems. 

In BIOS, the HDD is visible, but doesn't show the capacity of it.

Answer: 
Download and burn the bootable ISO for [Gnome Partition Editor](http://gparted.sourceforge.net/download.php) to a CD. Boot off that CD and use it to erase the hard drive and create a new partition.
It is difficult to discern if the problem is with the HDD itself (corrupt disc/ board) or with the Windows XP's ACHI driver for the system. I recommend trying another HDD in the laptop, if it works, you know the HDD is a no-go, otherwise I would recommend getting specific drivers for the laptop (if possible).