Just as easy is to replace those capacitors. Important information is number of microfarads, voltage, temperature, and diameter of area that replacement caps can be installed. Possible to replace them even with a more robust part. Price could be $0.50 or under $3 each.

Dell most likely sells an exact replacement motherboard. Generally, these parts are stocked right in their overnight delivery company's hub which means you have it by 10am the next day if the order goes in as late as something like 7 PM.

Talk to Dell first. :vomit: I know, but chances of shoehorning in an off-the-shelf board with all the existing components seems unlikely.

Having said that... will somebody explain to me how bulging capacitors would cause the problem described? I admit, I know nothing about such things (I came up on the software & systems admin side of things and learned just enough hardware to ask stupid questions in staff meetings) but it seems like bad capacitors wouldn't even get the system as far as booting.

The bad capacitor problem is so deep in the industry that there is a website/service specializing in it:

http://www.badcaps.net/

If you are not familiar with desoldering, replacing caps yourself is not recommended.

That said. If the caps are bulging, they need to be replaced, but that isn't necessarily the source of this problem. It could be, and it has to be ruled out, but Bullitt, you have to face the idea that you may fix the MB and find that the system still hangs for some other reason.

But that's how it goes with hardware, you know. You have to rule things out until you get to the problem.

UT understates the problem. Anymore, the atomic irreducible component that is considered replaceable is proportional to your budget (combined $$ and frustration threshold). It is nothing to consider replacing an entire motherboard, or, wrt the "budget" the whole computer. Thankfully is is easy to transplant parts of the busted machine into the new machine. Ultimately, what's important is your data. It's not the hardware, it's not the software, it's your data. And right now, your data is hopefully only being held hostage by some balky gear.

Getting your data out from behind the train wreck of your current system is your goal, and having incurring a minimum expense in the process is the best route. But that minimum may well involve a whole new motherboard.

Just curious (I have many Dells in my herd), what model machine are you dealing with? Maybe I have one here that I could eyeball. That would give me a better chance to speculate as to the odds of replacing it with a non-Dell unit.

Spot on... they're ready to go...last time it was $150 including quick delivery for a refurbished board. :thumbsup:

Imagine water flowing. It has ripples and haystacks, floods and droughts, etc. So what happens where the river ends? You get variation downstream. Computers don't like variation in their electricity stream flow. So computers have a reservoir usually just upstream. Sometimes the upriver streams flow major into the reservoir. Sometimes upriver streams are hardly running at all. But the reservoir maintains a constant flow farther downstream.

That is what a capacitor does. It’s a big electric reservoir. However when a capacitor is bulging, its 'reservoir' abilities are diminished. Eventually, the capacitor fails - the reservoir no longer exists.

Meanwhile, the computer is forgiving up to a point. It will work mostly when the electric stream varies somewhat. As that reservoir (capacitor) gets worse, and as the electricity downstream tends to ebb and flow, then the computer eventually hiccups on one of those ebbs or flows. We call that one hiccup a system crash.

There were many reasons for capacitor problems. One most published reason was a bad batch due to defective coating materials. Another was war in Africa where mines for tantalum were interrupted - forcing manufacturers to use other, less effficient types of capacitors. All of which is now irrelevant because the capacitors now must be replaced - at the component level or at the board level.

*Points to self* Yeah that's me. From here I think the way I'm going is to buy a new replacement motherboard from Dell over the phone (so I have relative confidence it's going to work with my system), then take the processor (Pent 4 3ghz) out of the old one and into the new one.

Good? Or am I missing something...

Can also be a PITA. Beware of bent pins.

Ok update time: got the new motherboard, installed with only minor swearing and object throwing. The way the processor was affixed tot he old motherboard, and to be on the new one, forced me to tinker around with it and actually pull the chip thingy off some big metal cooling vented thing, put it in its new home, then put the big metal thing back on. Booted up successfully and I went ahead and reinstalled windows. Everything was going swimmingly until I found out that uh oh, my little bia didn't want to connect to the internet.. and still doesn't. I suck with the whole proxy TCP whatever junk so I'm leaving this last stage to my school's IT department.
On the whole, dealing with Dell was pretty painless, they even shipped my new motherboard priority air for no extra charge.

Did you put any thermal compund between the CPU and the CPU cooler? If not, I would advise not using the computer until you do.

Thermal compound is too often overhyped by 'computer experts' who did not first learn both the underlying theory and practical experience. Look. So many buy heatsinks only on price; completely ignoring the most critical spec number discussed below. With so many heatsinks not properly machined, then manufacturers recommend thermal compound to everyone.

It's a simple test. Attach heatsink to CPU without any thermal compound. Execute a fixed test and measure CPU temperature. Will this destroy the CPU? No. Especially no for Intel CPUs.

Repeat the same test with thermal compound applied (frugally - too much can cause thermal and electrical problems). Thermal compound should result in less than 10 degree C temperature decrease - trivial according to CPUs. If thermal compound causes a greater temperature decrease, the heatsink is defective.

How to find minimally acceptable heatsinks? Inferior heatsinks do not provide the most critical specification - degrees C per watt. Any heatsink that does not provide that number is highly suspect - marketed to the naive.

One final point. Avoid the hype of Arctic Silver. Thermal compounds are equivalent - at less money than Arctic Silver.

Good advice tw, thanks for the suggestions...