hello, a few months ago I replaced the hard drive in my vaio comp without a hitch. basicly connected the thing, put the installation disc in then added windows afterwards and everything was dandy. My gf's computer which is a Dell had the HD die. she got the "harddrive is operating out of spec" error". mine just flat out didnt work one day. so I went to Staples bought a Maxtor drive (same brand I replaced mine with) did all the same stuff and NOTHING recognizes that there is in fact a hard drive in it. I believe this means the hard drive is defective (the Dell system is a desktop model, purchased in 2002) and had been running XP pro just before it died. she called me and said a friend of hers at work told her it needs to be fornmatted in A DIFFERENT computer!?!?!?!?!?! I think thats complete BS. Oh yeah, I tried setting the jumper to Both CS AND as a master, neither made a difference, the jumper configuration is different on the old HD and you cant put the jumper in the same spot on the new one. the old HD was made by Wester digital I dont know how useful that piece of info will be. So any one can offer some Ideas? I think the HD we bought is bad, or is there something weird about Dell computers, like there is about AOL? lol

Is the drive recognized in BIOS?

If not, then it's either the jumper, the cable, or the drive.

Another possibility, maybe the previous HDD didn't go South it was the IDE channel or ribbon. Also, disconnect and reconnect everything. Try to keep the PSU lines even in the number of devices plugged into them, and try switching the connector for the HDD. Maxtors used to be great drives, I'd tend to stick with WD and Seagate (actually, I'd advocate the Western Digitals but the 5 year warranty with Seagate is great).

What size was the old drive and what size is the new?

I agree, It seems like more of a communication type error message. Try a new cable and hope it's not the motherboard gone south. Also try the HD in another machine.

Try Dell's Community forum. http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums?~ck=mn
Post in Dimm, Hard Drive. Let them know what your Dimm model it is and what bois you have on your system. There should be someone there that can help.
That is to say if the help that you get here will not solve your problem.

here is something we (her and I) didnt know when I made the first post. her father just said he turned the power off in the house while working on something, she was backing up a dvd when it happened, she had left shrink running and stepped out of the house and came back to see the weird error message ......so now I really think something else is wrong. *sigh*. so, might be time for another computer........but thanks for the suggestions I am gonna look into the IDE cables....

He may have frazzled the motherboard.

First, go into bios and make sure that drive is recognized there. Then, you need to go into Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Disk Management, and then format the drive. You won't be able to use your drive unless you do this..

That'll be a little tough if Windows isn't installed yet on the drive.

My bad... Every drive I've installed had a software cd to assist in installation. But I have had problems with some hd's in dells. Fortunately, they were always secondary drives and I was able to format them with windows xp.