I have an HP Pavilion 700 series that had some hard drive issues lately. It came with an 80 MB drive but I have recently replaced it with a 500 MB hard drive. I will need to reinstall the operating system with a recovery disk. Should I expect any more difficulties in getting my PC up and running again?

It would be best to format your HD before its first use. And set your partions as needed. Then do your reinstall of the OS. Just be patient. After you reinstall if its an old OS it will take awhile to upgrade back.

As mentioned, should format the drive first as NTFS and not FAT32

If install 2000 or XP,Windows 2000 / XP maximum hard drive size 137 gigabyte limit (So you would have to partiton drives accordingly

Seahawk. There are ways around the 137 GB limit. It also depends on the service pak. I'm running XP Pro with 250 GB. Had 320 GB.

Seahawk. There are ways around the 137 GB limit. It also depends on the service pak. I'm running XP Pro with 250 GB. Had 320 GB.

Yes but the operating system has to already be installed to make edits to the registry and also have to at least have SP1 installed so XP can see above 137gb drives

So, can install with format or recover option and windows will install on 137gb and then have the rest as unallocated space
-From there you would have to make the edits and then can use partition software to extend the primary partition (unallocated space) for the rest of the space