Bulging Capacitors and How to Spot Them

by Dan Butler

It was frustrating. My mouse jumped all over the place. My system locked up for unexplained reasons. Maybe it restarts, maybe it doesn't. I've checked for viruses, spyware, and the rest. Al Gordon was convinced of spyware but I am not sure how it would get on my system in the first place.

So I'm typing this on my backup system that was ready for just such emergencies. Total down time to move from one machine to another? Less than one hour thanks to my backup routine. This is an older slower machine but it gets the job done until I can repair the main system.

It turns out that my motherboard has bad capacitors. They were bulging, leaking and the cause of all my problems. I'll be replacing the motherboard in the next day or two. Hopefully all my other components are still good. It turns out the "bulging capacitor" problem is widespread but not well acknowledged by the manufacturers. Not only is the problem widespread but it has elements of corporate espionage. Here is a link to an article about the problem:

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/resource/feb03/ncap.html

I put a picture of my bad motherboard with the leaking capacitors circled here:

http://www.tnpcnewsletter.com/dan/Bulging_Capacitors/

It would be worth taking a peek under the hood of your system to see if you are heading for disaster or not - before disaster strikes.

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© 2005 Dan Butler

Dan Butler is the Editor-in-Chief of TNPCNewsletter.com and the author of the amazing new book that shows you how to save your identity, get your email read, and put more time into the things you really enjoy...

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