Hi, I just bought a computer from an auction. The pc boots to a c: prompt. It has 2 hard drives & the second one is bad. When I type d: & press enter the hard drive makes a loud clicking noise that refuses to stop until I reboot the computer. Drive c: works good though. Without taking the cover off, can I just go in the cmos & set the second drive to none & the computer still work. I'm not comfortable taking the cover off yet. I want to do this because when I run dosshell it wont let me for some reason & drive d: starts clicking again & I have to reboot.

Yes you can but I would just disable the Secondary IDE port in the BIOS, this way the drive has no chance of being picked up but having power supplied to it, it still might make noise now and then cause the drive will spin regardless of what you do in the CMOS/BIOS. Later, KTTD

Kevin, Penny did not say that it was on the secondary IDE channel, just a second HD. Penny, in the first menu in BIOS, where you set the system date and time, there are settings for 4 Hard disks: toggle through the option until it get to NONE. Then exit the menu, and exit and SAVE. The comp will reboot. I should come up okay. Actually, removing a hard disk is extremely easy. Charles

Thanks for both responses. Charles it worked. Thank you. This is a great forum!!!!

Yeah, I assumed and it bit me in the ass :) See Ya, KTTD