hard drive problem

I just got a dell opt plex when I booted it up it worked fine but I went and switched the hard drive from my older computer and now its saying that the fan is out of range. It says alert! previous fan failure strike the f1 key to continue, F2 to run the setup utility. Could this be from my old computer still on the hard drive are something different?

 

Not too sure in this field, but I believe that it may well be a configuration thing,going from one machine to another.(Different parts and drivers,that sort of thing.)

 

This really sounds like an MBR, or Master Boot Record issue.

Dell is generally not that proprietary, and an install disc you have from them will install Windows on most any PC, no matter the manufacturer. It is basically an XP disc, and all you need is a license key in MOST cases.

HOWEVER, if a drive was formatted, and installed from another manufacturer, on another PC, it won't know what to do, and will make a "guess" as to a problem when it is confronted with a "foreign language". Hence the fan error.

Editing or modifying the MBR usually doesn't work, and if you want any data from the old drive you are using, you will need to slave it out, and copy it to the Dell drive.

As long as there is no password, and the files on the older, donor drive are not private, there should be no issue with a data transfer.

If you contact Dell, they will more than likely send you a recovery disc for that Optiplex, and it will install XP on any EIDE, or with later Optiplexes, SATA drive that is installed.

Contacting the manufacturer is the cheapest way to obtain an OS...

 

That shouldn't make any difference if you have administrator rights and can therefore take ownership of any file, should it not? I've had to do that many times when having re-installed Windows and found that I could not access my files on my second internal hard-drive (even when using the same login name and password as the previous installation).

 

The Dell fan error is coming from the BIOS prior to boot. In most Dell desktops, it is underneath a green plastic shroud which pivots and is blowing out the back of the system. A replacement fan is cheap.
Go here and type in the service tag number for your system: http://support.dell.com/support/top...t_central?~ck=ln&c=us&cs=04&l=en&lnki=0&s=bsd
You will have acces to everything including the service manual.