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March 10th, 2003 21:00

Alert - Previous Fan Failure

Hi first time user. I received this message as I booted up "Alert - Previous fan failure. Press F1 to continue." I called Dell support and found out I was out of warrenty but he said go to a local store and have the power supply replaced. I took it in and they replaced the fan - not the power supply and said it would now be OK. The alert keeps coming on and I have to press F1 to get to my desk top. My questions are - Is replacing only the fan the right thing to do? and How do I get rid of the alert if it is the right thing to do?

Thanks in advance

1.1K Posts

March 10th, 2003 21:00

You need to check the fan that was replaced. It has to have all three wires hooked to the motherboard. Some fans hook to the powersupply buy a four pin plug, others hook to both the powersupply and a rpm lead to the motherboard. For the Dell to work you need a three pin plug with all three wires hooked to the motherboard.

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3 Posts

March 12th, 2003 00:00

I checked and its a 3 prong plug. The fan is working fine but I need to get rid of them alert message and hitting F1 before I can get to my desktop after it boots up. Any more advice on how I can reset something so my unit acts like it supposed to. It's very unfriendly the way it is now.

Thanks

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3 Posts

March 12th, 2003 00:00

Sorry about the last post and the grammer.

2 Posts

March 12th, 2003 02:00

Welcome to my nightmare.

Previous fan failure error is generated from the log in the BIOS screen once your processor fan failed, and will come up every time until the log is cleared - as you are finding out.  A state-side tech was kind enough to help me through it.

When starting up, press F2 and scroll down to the next to the last line - System event log.  Press Enter.  Read it (take notes), clear it, and exit.  Everything should work on the next boot.  Hope your fan and processor are OK.  My fan failed, processor got hot.  New fan surges up and down every 30 seconds.  I'm not impressed.

Good luck.

 

2 Posts

March 12th, 2003 02:00

Welcome to my nightmare.  This is how it works on the 8250; yours may be slightly different, but this may give a head start.

Previous fan failure error is generated from the log in the BIOS screen once your processor fan failed, and will come up every time until the log is cleared - as you are finding out.  A state-side tech was kind enough to help me through it.

When starting up, press F2 and scroll down to the next to the last line - System event log.  Press Enter.  Read it (take notes), clear it, and exit.  Everything should work on the next boot.  Hope your fan and processor are OK.  My fan failed, processor got hot.  New fan surges up and down every 30 seconds.  I'm not impressed.

Good luck.

 

4 Posts

March 23rd, 2003 01:00

I have a a fan failure that required me to replace the fan. Everything was okay for a while and I started to get the previous fan failure message. I reset the event log, nothing happened , I ran the diagnostic and nothing, then the new bios upgrade was posted and after flashing my BIOS and then reseating the fan connector again the message is gone. Thanks to Robin Kumar and other tech members for all there help.

 

Harry

34 Posts

March 23rd, 2003 20:00

I had the exact same thing, dell sent me 3 fans, didn't work, at last they send somebody to my house and repalced the whole system board

265 Posts

March 24th, 2003 02:00

Mnman:

Also if it keeps doing that after you clear the sys log. Try clearing your nvram, you can do this by getting into setup (f2 or del) and turning on you caps lock and your scrool lock  and then hitting alt + e.  When you do that you may or may not here a beep. once you have done it save changes and exit. When your pc restarts you shouldnt get that message.

1 Message

March 26th, 2003 13:00

Same issue with my 8250.  Fan stopped working within two weeks of purchase, processor overheated, replaced fan, and now the fan surges every 30 seconds, very very annoying.  Do you or anyone else know if this problem is due to the replacement fan are possible damage due to the initial overheating?

1 Message

April 20th, 2003 04:00

We have had a similar problem with our 8250. It was fine while the weather was cold. When it got warmer in the house ( 75 F ) the fan speed started wandering up and down. It would speed up for a second and then slow down for four seconds or so and then speed back up again for a second and then repeat this over and over. I have never had any overheat error messages and the processor is not working hard when the speed variations occur (0 to 2%); no hard work being done, such as video processing, etc.

We do have XP Pro, 3.06 gig P4-hyper, 1.5 gig ram, 200 gig HD, two DVD drives (one is a burner), the Audigy Sound Card and and the 128 Meg DDR Radeon 9700 Pro, which also has a fan on it, I believe.

I talked to tech support and didn't really get a straight answer other than something to the effect that " Mr. Blain, your computer is under warranty and if something breaks, we will fix it".

If you or anyone comes up with a solution for this problem, PLEASE let us all know.

Thanks in advance.

John

1 Message

December 9th, 2011 15:00

This is a reply to a really old post, but I am working on a realyy old dell dimension 2200 and the CPU fan bit the dirt so I replaced it with one out of the junk box.  The replacement had the full three wire connector and should have been a direct replacement for the old fan, but the CMOS error about the "Previous Fan Failure" would not go away.  The original connector has three pins but two are wired together, so...when standing behind the computer the connector has a black wire on the right and the other two must be jumpered together to get the error message to clear.  My replacement fan required that I jumper the white wire and the red together, that would be the center pin and the left pin.  Do that, clear the error log in Setup and the problem will go away.

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8.8K Posts

December 9th, 2011 16:00

I have a really old Dell Dimension 2350 and a Vantec 92mm 3-wire fan was a direct bolt-in replacement.

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