would two 100GB partitions on the 200GB drive have avoided the problem?

No, the limit seems to be in the size of the harddisk, not in the size of the partitions.

I had devided that 200gig up into 4 partitions, the biggest being 80gig, just to avoid this problem. Needless to say that didn't work.

It's really quite incredible how badly documented this problem is, especially considering how common it may become in the future when 137+ disks won't be so rare anymore.
Knowing MS, they probably assume that everyone will be using WinXP SP1 (or later) by then.

No way!