Any signs of overheating? Is the heat sink correctly attached? Are all fans clean and working?

You might try clearing NVRAM (resetting BIOS to factory defaults).

Unplug from wall and press/hold power button for ~15 sec

Open the case and remove the motherboard battery

 <ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell>

Press/hold power button again for ~30 sec

Reinstall the battery (right-side-up!) and see if it will boot correctly now.

Ron

Hi I noticed you have had a similar problem that I am running into with the DELL Prescision 490 (System Thermal Solution Compromised...). I was wondering if you have had any success? My 490 displays this intermittently but not all the time... so I can get it to boot up correctly (not using F1) sometimes... and othertimes not. Is this a cover switch that is not getting pressed or is bad... I have not been able to figure this out. I have tried opening and closing the case door etc. but it still has this problem.

I have a Dell Precision 690 with an updated A08 Bios.

With this Bios reset, now I can't enter in setup, I obtain this message:

Alert! Incompatible processor detected.

What can i do now?

Solvented.

I have do the following: quit the cable power, push/hold the power button for 30 seconds, put now the cable power.

I have had the same problem (on precision 690) pretty much since I bought this machine. It has been an intermittent problem until now.

I had previously been given the advice (by Dell ) to reset the IP - this used to work. The problem has got more and more frequent - now it does not turn on without the issue.  

Of course I am now out of warranty and so would have to pay for phone support...... this is not acceptable given the history

Is there any permanent solution to this??? DELL???????

New BIOS update to solve??

This was an expensive machine which I would not need to replace for 'years and years' (Dell technician's words)

It is  a far more involved problem than that

Got good support today from Dell - for those in the same situation:

Cleared some sort of hardware memory (?) by using the blue jumper next to the CMOS battery.

 - move the blue jumper to the nearer pair of pins.

 - take battery out.

 - put AC back in for 15 secs.

 - AC back out  and CMOS battery back in

 - put jumper back to original position

 - boot

Of course this may change start up settings (boot order, HD settings) so be sure to know what they are in case you need to do that 

- NB I am not a techie so I do not profess to know what I am doing  - It worked here (precision 690) having messed around for 3 yaesr with other 'solutions'

You have to remove the dust bunnies from the power supply and the system case.

Having a fault on the message 'thermal solution compromised' I tried the above and found myself not able to enter the system setup anymore. And above that it stated 'Alert! Incompatable processor detected.' Although before I had a working quadcore on the newest bios release working. Tried many times in different ways to drown all the power from the system (hours of disconnecting and removing cmos battery etc etc., pushing the startbutton tens of seconds) with no success.

A phonecall to dell support gave the solution: Disconnect from the power main, PUSH AND HOLD power button for AT LEAST A MINUTE. And this worked. Should have called them earlier...

Dell Precision 690 quad core system setup inaccessable  

Same problem and solved!

Dell precision will have same problem if you open case but dont close it.

Make sure you close the cover of computer case.

worked beautifully for my dell t5400.