System freezing frequently

[Paul Johnson]

On 8/7/07, Tim <ignored_mailbox at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-08-07 at 23:18 -0400, Chris Kurecka wrote:
> > I was able to check the CPU temperature and found it was hovering
> > around 40 degrees C, which I think was fine for an Athlon 64 X2 3800+
> > based on what I read online.  Regardless, I decided to take off the
> > old thermal paste with isopropyl alcohol and put on new paste (was
> > able to get some Arctic Silver 5, as recommended, from a coworker).  I
> > followed the instructions perfectly, but now the machine doesn't boot
> > (the motherboard light is on but the CPU light isn't).  If anybody has
> > any ideas why that might've happened, I'd appreciate it.
>

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.



-- 
Paul E. Johnson
Professor, Political Science
University of Kansas