Dell Optiplex GX1 500 Mhz PIII

[Gems48]

The screen looks like this:

Primary hard disk drive 1 not found
Secondary hard disk drive 1 not found
Alert! Cover was previously removed
Strike F1 key to continue, F2 key to run setup utility

Bios detects the hard drive, floppy, and CDROM. When you press F1 to boot, it will go into windows.

Why do I get the above message on the screen when Bios detects the drives

The service tag for this machine is U1RL2
Bios version: A03

 

[firepyro515]

This can happen because big companies like dell, compaq/hp, gateway and some other ones lock their bios and have certain devices that detect if you've opened your case before, and this is their way to tell you that you opened your case and that if a problem happens with whatever you did, then they're not responsible

 

[geekster]

Sometimes this is caused by a dead mobo battery.System has to reload default settings at every bootup.