«

"Dave Hardenbrook" <> wrote in message
news: k.net...
>I have had a very daunting troubleshooting process, and I would like to
> know if the "High Gurus" here agree with my analysis:
>
> I was given the task of troubleshooting a Dell Dimension 2350 running
> Windows XP SP2 that was donated to my church. The obvious problem was
> random spontanious reboots. I first tried disabling "Restart on System
> Failure", but no STOP errors occured at the reboots, and there was
> nothing in the Event Viewer to provide any clues. And there was no
> apparent pattern to the reboots, except that they seemed to happen
> mostly on mouse clicks, or when a USB device was being accessed
> (sometimes it happened when the system was sitting idle, though).
>
> Then I tried swapping various components with "Known Goods": RAM, PSU,
> Hard drive, etc. Problem persisted. Ran various low-level diagnostics
> on the CPU, etc. No problems detected, but the reboots continued.
>
> Since the swapping of components did not solve the problem, I have
> concluded that the motherboard is bad. I believe this is corroborated
> by the fact that on examining the mobo more closely, some of the
> capacitors have dark blue splotches that look like leakages, and there
> is a definite though nondescript smell (its rather like cinnamon rolls,
> but that might be my imagination).
>
> So would you agree that it is almost certainly the motherboard?
>
> Dave

There's a whole generation of mobos out there that have failed the same way.
Most are out of service by now, but maybe this one was tougher than most.
Some folks have replaced those capacitors, but an entirely new mobo isn't so
expensive.

-John O

On Tue, 6 May 2008 11:31:09 -0400, John O wrote:

> "Dave Hardenbrook" <> wrote in message
> news: k.net...
>>I have had a very daunting troubleshooting process, and I would like to
>> know if the "High Gurus" here agree with my analysis:
>>
>> I was given the task of troubleshooting a Dell Dimension 2350 running
>> Windows XP SP2 that was donated to my church. The obvious problem was
>> random spontanious reboots. I first tried disabling "Restart on System
>> Failure", but no STOP errors occured at the reboots, and there was
>> nothing in the Event Viewer to provide any clues. And there was no
>> apparent pattern to the reboots, except that they seemed to happen
>> mostly on mouse clicks, or when a USB device was being accessed
>> (sometimes it happened when the system was sitting idle, though).
>>
>> Then I tried swapping various components with "Known Goods": RAM, PSU,
>> Hard drive, etc. Problem persisted. Ran various low-level diagnostics
>> on the CPU, etc. No problems detected, but the reboots continued.
>>
>> Since the swapping of components did not solve the problem, I have
>> concluded that the motherboard is bad. I believe this is corroborated
>> by the fact that on examining the mobo more closely, some of the
>> capacitors have dark blue splotches that look like leakages, and there
>> is a definite though nondescript smell (its rather like cinnamon rolls,
>> but that might be my imagination).
>>
>> So would you agree that it is almost certainly the motherboard?
>>
>> Dave
>
> There's a whole generation of mobos out there that have failed the same way.
> Most are out of service by now, but maybe this one was tougher than most.
> Some folks have replaced those capacitors, but an entirely new mobo isn't so
> expensive.
>
> -John O

It might be for a Dell, if the system is proprietary. I just read an
article about this, if the case layout is Dell-proprietary, a non-Dell
motherboard might not fit into it. With the cost of new computers these
days, it might be cheaper to just replace the whole system.

Patty