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Intermittant boot problems...

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by jlogan

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I have various Pcs Dell and (oh god) Gateway. I can't believe this many PSUs are going down at the same time. If you shut them down and leave each system unplugged from power for a while then reattach they will boot. If you just shut them down and try to restart its a gamble sometimes yes, sometimes no. No POST codes at all.
This has just started happening on a grander scale with these systems. I have checked the surge supressors, and the voltage at wall and on power cable so now I am out of ideas, reseated RAM, connectors, etc.

Is it just total coincedence that all the PSUs are starting to go?

Thanks.

4 replies

by jlogan

I pulled the guts out of one system, used board, cpu, and ram, booted fine 10 out of 10.
Added HDD to the mix booted 10 out of 10.
Put back in case with only those connected booted 2 out of 5.
Installed washers on all hold downs, back to the norm of having to be disconnected from PSU and getting a pop when reconnecting PSU.

This is really getting to me, 5 systems with the same symptoms, different manufacturers and models.

by robo_dev

if all these systems are on the same circuit/power feed, have you checked for proper voltage/polarity/grounding?

Anyone doing any arc welding and/or particle accelerator testing nearby?

Have you heard of the 'capacitor plague'? There were millions of PC power supplies/motherboards that ended up with faulty caps due to a case of industrial espionage gone wrong. Gateway is one of the ones who ended up with lots of those caps....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

by jlogan

I checked voltage at the wall, surge supressor, and power cable to the PSU. I even relocated the system to a seperate circuit in the building.

No construction or scientific experiments unless I bring up the guy doing multi-dimensional polarity inversion, just kidding.

I visually inspected all the caps, no swelling, cracks or heat damage to any of them. I will check the link you provided to see if there are any models/serials effected.

Thanks for the reply.

by jlogan

Good call, on 2 of the systems there were a couple of caps that when looked at with a magnifier you could see swelling on the vents most likely reducing the capacitance of the components. I am chalking these up to bad motherboards. I found that the Dell PSU is faulty as well just by the sound it is making in the control unit.

The pics in the article you linked me to made it much easier to ID the bad caps. Thanks a lot.

Cheers!

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