I have a HD that I have tried to reformat but I can't because it prompts that it is write protected. How do I disable this to proceed reformat?

I would suggest removing the drive partitions and re-creating them - You can use the Windows XP install CD for this, or an old-school DOS boot disk with FDISK on it.

Short of that - I have seen drives that have an actual jumper setting that can lock a drive as "read-only".