Swollen capacitor question

I work on machines, but this question is a little deeper than I understand. I have a computer I have been working on for hours. I crack open the machine to replace the fan in the power supply, and what do I find? Swollen capacitors. As I well know this will mean the eventual doom of the motherboard.

But, does anyone know of any harm that could come from running the machine like this until it finally craps out? Could a busted capacitor damage something else? Any other hazard?

I feel so awful about discovering it. Here I am reformatting the thing, and fixing it up, and I discover another problem. I know all I really need to do is replace the board, but that's near $100 extra dollars. I think in this case it would be worth it, because she has a pile of RAM, the processor is fairly quick, and she has a new hard drive. But, if I could delay that expense I would.

Troy

Swolen capacitors will probably be able to run for quite a while to come without affecting much, but eventually the transistor that regulates the voltage will blow. You can replace the capacitors by soldering them off the board and putting in new ones, but I personally believe that its far easier to just get another board, despite the price!

Oh I know the pain, don't worry. A new board will mean doing a repair installation to windows, not to mention drivers and all that. But I think its the easiest thing to do, maybe showing her the swolen capacitors will ease her into replacing the board.

In two decades of repairing computers I have never seen a regularly used computer with swollen/leaking caps that didn't have some sort of stability issue.
I usually recommend immediate motherboard replacement because it will usually not last for very long once they start to go.

reply to post by sykickvision


Adding more to my reply:

I would: Go ahead and fix the computer (if it works) and then point out the swollen caps to her. Explain to her that it doesn't have much time left (she will ask how long) and that it might last as long as several months or as little as a few days. That way you've cleared your conscience about it and she knows the deal with it so when it goes out, she has been forewarned.

I keep a box of old/dead motherboards, graphics cards, etc around for just these type scenarios. More often than not I can find a like-kind, same voltage and microfarad (μF), cap. as the swollen or burst one(s).

If not you might be able to get the same from a place such as Radio Shack.

A few minutes at the soldering station and you're good to go.

Personally,
I'd either replace the cap(s) or the board. Yes, it could very well function as-is for quite some time, or it could go at anytime and possibly take the processor with it ... depending on Which cap(s) are swollen or burst.

Better safe than sorry, especially if it's a newer processor, more costly to replace than say an old Pentium IV.

Soldering is something I'm not really experienced at. That's where I would feel safer to have someone else do it, and that would add extra cost. Not sure how much though. I might have to contact a local shop and see what they would charge.

I noticed a lag in the first loading screen before the Windows splash, and that should have been my clue right there.

It does seem to be running pretty well though.

If I find a direct replacement, like on Ebay, I should be fine to just drop it in without having to touch the OS.

Thank you guys for the responses.

Troy

I would replace it, a few bucks lost is better than to lose more when the thing catches fire. It doesn't happen alot, usually you see (like others mentioned) odd things like hangups or missing stuff in the gui or it just won't startup but watch this vid:

www.youtube.com...

I've replaced caps on several boards and they all lasted for years as dns servers.

Try it, it's a cheap fix.

Yeah, the computers can become very slow and unresponsive, when those caps are bad. Not consistent.

I went ahead and ordered the motherboard. I may give soldering a try at some point to see if I can bring a machine back.

I was there when she called DELL, and I spoke a support staff who told me the price of the motherboard was $300. That's pretty ridiculous on an older machine. I can run out right now and get a new tower for that money.

But, I found a new board on E-bay for a few bucks over $100. Same board, should be able to just pop it in, and be ready to go.

Troy

Originally posted by sykickvision
reply to post by sykickvision

 

Go ahead and fix the computer (if it works) and then point out the swollen caps to her. Explain to her that it doesn't have much time left (she will ask how long) and that it might last as long as several months or as little as a few days. That way you've cleared your conscience about it and she knows the deal with it so when it goes out, she has been forewarned.

Indeed, show her this.

Originally posted by cybertroy
I noticed a lag in the first loading screen before the Windows splash, and that should have been my clue right there.

Any random blue screens with it yet? I remember having more and more frequent ones the closer it got to the computer dying. This was back when I had no idea about computers (about 4 years ago), thankfully I know what to look out for now Good luck with it

- Phoenix

I had a hunch it was a Dell, perhaps you may already know but they have had problems with capacitators with several models. A quick google search would give a lot of articles on the subject:
www.google.nl...=nl&q=dell+defective+capacitators&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&fp=1&cad=b

Hi folks,

I appreciate the replies!

But, I swear, nothing seems to be simple with this computer. I'll just post the message I sent to the seller. Maybe someone has some insight into this problem.

"You did a great job packaging and getting the
motherboard out to me, but I'm having some issues
I can't seem to get past.

I just had reformatted and did a clean install of
XP on a new hard drive. I discovered along the
way that the old motherboard had swollen and
leaking capacitors, so I ordered this one, which
should be a direct replacement. I popped it in,
put everything back, and tried to boot Windows.
Got a blue screen talking about checking the drive
for viruses or corruption. Ok, so I end up
putting in a Windows XP CD to do a chkdsk, well,
it doesn't recognize that there is a hard drive
there. In BIOS the hard drive is recognizable. I
tried the old hard drive, which is still good, and
I get the same problem, and I tried a third hard
drive, freshly formatted, XP cd doesn't see it.

Also note that I pulled the CMOS battery out and
different SATA ports, same problem. I also ran a
live distribution of Ubuntu Linux on the machine,
and I could read the drive"


I don't want to have to reformat, but dangit, even if I was really willing to, Windows doesn't even acknowledge that there is a hard drive. Right now, I have the CMOS battery out for a little more of an extended time to see if that fixes things. If the board were bad, I guessing I couldn't read the hard drive in Ubuntu.

Thanks,

Troy

Hmm, I think I may have just figured it out.

Here's what I posted with a computer guy friend of mine.

Chad, I think it was in BIOS. Changed it to combination of SATA and PATA, and I was able to boot up. That's nuts, it was defaulted to RAID, if not it would go to ACHI. Basically, I had to look up ACHI and determine if it was an option. Aparently a special driver is needed for XP. Vista supports it out of the box.
What I think, was this person updated the BIOS, enabling the RAID/ACHI feature default, thus Windows was unable to do anything with the drives. That's why Linux could read it, because it can support it out of the box too. And, I know for sure this thing isn't set up for RAID."

That was my guess as to what happened at the time.

Troy

I also had to disable the onboard sound to get the Sound Blaster card to set up properly. Every time I had installed the software before this, and restarted the machine, I got the message that Windows had found a new piece of hardware. And, this was bogging the machine down. It's now running pretty darn good.

reply to post by cybertroy


Same Dell model motherboard? It's only a matter of time before those cap's start popping too.
Would have replaced the board with an Asus or Gigabyte that would use the client's RAM and Memory.

Glad to see you figured out the problem. Just hope you are not "fixing" it again too soon.

If what the person said was true about the motherboard, it was never used. Came off of a new machine with a damaged exterior. I certainly hope this was true. It was a 3 GHz machine, so not super old. The BIOS was 2006, so I'm not sure, but the BIOS may have been updated, or it was one of the last models to have XP on them, because Vista came out in about 2006. I hope she will at least get a couple of years out of it. Then she might be ready for Windows 7. Of course little changes seem to confuse her. Some people are like that with computers.

Yeah, a different board would have been great, but the re-install had already taken place, and I would have had to do all that stuff all over again.

Troy

Originally posted by sykickvision
In two decades of repairing computers I have never seen a regularly used computer with swollen/leaking caps that didn't have some sort of stability issue.
I usually recommend immediate motherboard replacement because it will usually not last for very long once they start to go.

Same here. Swollen caps means immanent failure. PC boards are cheap these days, why run something that is sick and about to fail?
www.outletpc.com...