System freezing frequently

[Chris Kurecka]

> > Paul Johnson 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 don't have a Dell, but was intrigued by the story and checked the
capacitors.  For better or worse, they were fine.

Turns out that my PC isn't booting because one single pin bent & fell
off of the processor.  Since I had to replace that, and also didn't
think the CPU was the issue anyway, I ordered a new CPU, motherboard,
RAM and PSU.  Gotta wait 3 business days for it all to arrive, and
then to assemble it, but at least the issue should be resolved
(assuming it was a hardware problem, which it probably was).

Thanks to everyone for your help and suggestions along the way.  I'll
reply to this if the issue persists with the new hardware, but
otherwise feel free to assume the new parts fixed it.

Chris Kurecka