System freezing frequently

[Casey Stamper]

Robin Laing wrote:
> Paul Johnson wrote:
>> On 8/7/07, Tim <ignored_mailbox at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>>
>> I've been watching this thread thinking about a whole bunch of PCs
>> here that have had the exact same symptom.
>>
>> My research group had 5 Dell  Optiplex 270 that worked fine for 2
>> years, then randomly locked up.  There was no pattern to the problem,
>> systems passed memtest86.  The temperature was fine.  Sometimes we
>> went 2 weeks without a lockup, then they would lock several times in a
>> day.
>>
>> Finally discovered problem was faulty capacitors in motherboard.
>> Instead of looking like flat topped cylinders, their tops were swolen,
>> so they looked sorta like the tops of cupcakes.  Then I found out that
>> people at the Dell company were just waiting for repair requests.
>> Because they sold a hell of a lot of those PCs.
>>
>> After replacing one motherboard, a machine worked great 8 months, one
>> of the machines started to do it again.  I went through the usual
>> crap--all that stuff you have been doing.  I got to the point where I
>> could not depend on it to do anything.  Discovered problem was the
>> main power supply was failing.  It supplied enough power to boot and
>> run, but apparently not enough for the bursts of energy needed by one
>> of the IDE drives, and when that drive freaked out, it made the whole
>> system lock up.
>>
>> Maybe this info does not fix your pc, but it may let you know you have 
>> company.
>>
>>
>>
> 
> We had a notice come around work about Dell computers and capacitors 
> some time ago.
> 

I work as a civilian contractor for the U.S. Army and most of our 
end-user systems are the same model. If I'm not mistaken, the majority 
of the systems in use in the Army - if not all of the branches of 
service - are the GX270. We don't have a large user base here (about 
70), but we've already had about 25% failure w/in the last 2 months. 
We're in the middle of a life-cycle evaluation and upgrade but what a 
headache in the meantime! Maybe "thermal event" will go down in tech 
history as one of those memes like "BSOD."

-- 
Casey Stamper
http://www.stampersite.com/wordpress