Alert - Previous Fan Failure

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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