Is It Finally Gone?

I think I finally lost my old XP machine.

This is truly sad.
It wasn't a computer I used a lot. A friend slapped together some spare parts a long time ago, so I could look around XP and see if I liked it. It has (had?) a tiny, tiny hard drive and was slow as a slug, but I liked it.

About four years ago, I tried to turn it on and it made a horrible clicking noise. I had never heard of the 'click of death', so I just kept rebooting until it started - and it did. Whenever I turned it off, or the lights went out (sneeze too strongly and our power goes out), I would keep rebooting till the click stopped, and it would work. Yes, yes it would. For FOUR YEARS, it ALWAYS booted.

All my techy friends said the click of death was final. What do they know?

Sure, it could take anywhere from 3 to 30 reboots, but it ALWAYS would boot... eventually.

Sometimes, the screen would say 'no operating system found'. Oddly, that was a good sign. It would usually boot the next time I tried.
Sometimes, it would throw odd ansi characters on the screen - hearts, squares, blinking characters - but it always would boot... eventually.

Today, I was trying to start it, because the lights flashed a few days ago and it shut down. Now... it wants the cmos password. I never set a cmos password. I tried cmos, password, bios, the usual suspects. They didn't work. I went online and looked it up. Tried a few other known passwords. Nope. Three tries and:

System Disabled
My last resort will be to pop it open and pull out the cmos battery. I don't want to do that, but I can't take it anywhere to get someone to clear, or bypass, the password. I can't imagine what a real tech would think if I told them to 'just ignore the click of death, it will boot.' ::sigh::

I know, I should simply let it go. I know that. I could probably pick up a faster system with a bigger hard drive for the cost of the copper in its components, but I like my computers - I have three - and it's very, very hard for me to let one go. The other two computers, with three different operating systems aren't that computer. This computer - a tablet - has XP Pro, but it isn't Clicky, the Unbreakable.

Plus, there'd be a desk in my office empty for a while. I can't have that.