[sonofswift]

A few years ago I had a motherboard that was causing me some problems freezing up from time to time. I put it down to bad drivers or faulty hardware. I think I bought it in 2002 or 2003.

I eventually upgraded to a newer motherboard with a new video card and memory and had no problems.

Recently I tried to build another PC using the old motherboard and it worked for a day or two then it wouldn't even come to post. I tried everything I could think of and what others suggested but couldn't get it to work at all. Arrrgh!

Then I noticed an article in a PC magazine about leaky capacitors. I went home, checked my mobo and there they were staring me in the face - 4 capacitors bulging and leaking brown stuff. I bought a new mobo and every part I thought might have been faulty worked beautifully.

Check this out for more info: http://www.tecnopoli.../leakycaps.html

I wonder how many mysterious problems reported in these forums may be caused by this.

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Thanks for posting that. Lets hope it dose help others with the same problem.

Edited by Michael Buckley, 19 October 2005 - 08:48 PM.

[Michael]

Thanks for posting that. Lets hope it dose help others with the same problem.

Edited by Michael Buckley, 19 October 2005 - 08:48 PM.

[AndyW]

When I first heard that "bulging" capacitors on motherboards might be the root cause of systems freezing and/or rebooting I scoffed !

I have searched for 4 months to cure my freezing and rebooting problems.

After reading the above forum thread and links I inspected my motherboard and found 4 "bulging" capacitors leaking brown material.

After replacing these 4 capacitors (1500uF, 6.3V) with Panasonic (1500uF, 10V) ones my system is now A1 up and running with the graphics 3D hardware acceleration set at full. It has never failed yet.

I am one happy bunny !

So many thanks to this article.

P.S. My motherboard details are:
CPU Type AMD Athlon XP, 1666 MHz (12.5 x 133) 2000+
Motherboard Name Jetway V266B (5 PCI, 1 AGP, 1 CNR, 4 DIMM, Audio)
Motherboard Chipset VIA VT8366A Apollo KT266A

[dsenette]

i always wonder why people are so reluctant to believe the bulging cap theory/hypothesis/diagnosis... i mean...the computer is an electronic device...and those little doodads poking out everywhere actually do things to help it work (or make it work)...you let out "the magic smoke" (or brown capacitance ooze) and bad things happen...plain and simple..

not taking a dig at anyone here...just...general comment..

i've had numerous times where i've suggested to someone i know to check the board visually for such things...and they just laugh "yeah right....like those things can go bad like that"...it always amazes me how much "magic" people assume exists when it comes to their computers

[SRX660]

Been there and done that for a pretty long time now. As we speak i am replacing some bad caps on a Gigabyte GA-7VRXP rev 2.0 board. I had a H-P E-vectra running for a good while before the bad caps finally killed it. I never could find the right 1000uf 25v caps for that motherboard.

heres a good link.

http://www.badcaps.net/

SRX660