Remove Write Protection on Hard drive

I am trying to run scandisk to fix an error on the hard drive of my laptop but I cannot do it because it says that the drive is write protected and to remove the write-protect tab and reinsert the disk and try again. Do I actually have to take the hard drive out of my laptop and remove the tab or is there a way to remove the write protection in windows XP. I checked in the system BOIS and there was no option to remove write protection. I would appreciate it if someone could please help me. None of my network drivers will install because there is an error in the drivers folder of my hard drive and I cannot even get online.