Hard drives listed as removable

[Bill M-R]

New guy on the block, but seeking help with XP SP3!
1- When I click on 'Safely Remove Hardware' all the partitions on my 3 hard drives (128GB SSD and two 1TB Barracudas) plus my DVD drive, show as 'removable drives', exactly like my USB stick:
Safe-Remove.jpg
2- In addition, they are all listed in the 'Send to' menu (which takes 5 seconds to display the list):
Send-To.jpg
3- clicking on the 'Start' button, the entire top section remains blank for 5 seconds (presumably checking round all the partitions for the apps listed there?)
Any ideas on what is wrong and how to correct it would be gratefully received!

[chowur]

This is a quote from another thread;In BIOS - Is your drive controller enabled as AHCI? This allows SATA drives to be hot swap - removable. You and I can both search SevenForums for a reg hack to remove the two drives from the Safely Remove Hardware (SRH) icon list. I think there is a registry setting.

I'm a bit tired tonight, but I think you can change the BIOS setting to IDE without ill effect (not true for changing IDE to AHCI, but I think AHCI to IDE is OK).

[Bill M-R]

Thanks for that, Chowur, it was a great help in jogging braincell(s) and suggesting a line of attack!
1) My BIOS is 2007 version and does not appear to feature AHCI (I updated it a year ago to handle 1TB HD's).
2) I suspect the trouble started around the time that I (unsuccessfully) tried to install the drivers for an external USB3 1TB WD Passport. Eventually I found a mention in a forum that the drivers wouldn't work with certain AMD CPU's (thanks WD!!) but I suspect it's the fall-out from these drivers that are causing my problem.
3) I'm currently rebuilding my number 1 PC after an Intel mobo failure (6 months use!) and have gone back to AMD & Asus, and am battling with Win 7 Pro 64-bit - but the 1TB external works fine in this environment.
Thanks again!