Bad capacitors - take 2?

Well it looks like bad capacitors are in the news again, this time
even making the popular press:

http://news.com.com/PCs+plagued+by+...ml?tag=nefd.pop

As someone who has experienced this exact issue on my home PC (using
an MSI K7N420 motherboard) as well as having seen it at work on some
systems, I know that the issue is serious and can be a real pain in
the ass. It's good to see that Dell is finally owning up and fixing
their defective system boards, though I would like it if HP, IBM and
all the motherboard companies would do the same.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca

On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 21:27:22 +0100, Tony Hill <hilla_nospam_20@yahoo.ca>
wrote:

> Well it looks like bad capacitors are in the news again

again in the news, but the problem newer really went away after the first
time
I recap boards/power supplies regularly.

--
I really have no idea what this means. And since I can't install linux on
it, I'm gonna go back to surfing pr0n.
the penguins are psychotic / just smile and wave

"Tony Hill" <hilla_nospam_20@yahoo.ca> wrote in message
news:fuicn15pg99eh47jm9g0j74edtoui82a1q@4ax.com...
> Well it looks like bad capacitors are in the news again, this time
> even making the popular press:
>
>
http://news.com.com/PCs+plagued+by+...ml?tag=nefd.pop
>
> As someone who has experienced this exact issue on my home PC (using
> an MSI K7N420 motherboard) as well as having seen it at work on some
> systems, I know that the issue is serious and can be a real pain in
> the ass. It's good to see that Dell is finally owning up and fixing
> their defective system boards, though I would like it if HP, IBM and
> all the motherboard companies would do the same.
>

Maybe so, but I find this quote laughable:

"Dell declined to identify any of its component suppliers but did say that
despite periodic system shutdowns, data loss was not a factor in the
workstation PCs with the faulty capacitors."

Huh?? There's no data loss associated w/ a machine spontaneously shutting
down, rebooting, or god knows what else? Are they kidding? Heck, you can
easily lose data when that happens. As a software developer, I've lost
plenty of work from system crashes. Sounds to me their trying to save face
(and perhaps legal action) by soft peddling the implications.

Jim

> -------------
> Tony Hill
> hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca

On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 15:27:22 -0500, Tony Hill <hilla_nospam_20@yahoo.ca>
wrote:

>Well it looks like bad capacitors are in the news again, this time
>even making the popular press:
>
>http://news.com.com/PCs+plagued+by+...ml?tag=nefd.pop
>
>As someone who has experienced this exact issue on my home PC (using
>an MSI K7N420 motherboard) as well as having seen it at work on some
>systems, I know that the issue is serious and can be a real pain in
>the ass. It's good to see that Dell is finally owning up and fixing
>their defective system boards, though I would like it if HP, IBM and
>all the motherboard companies would do the same.

I think Abit and IBM *did* fess up a coupla years back... maybe in some
limited way. Geez I hope this doesn't mean I can expect a spate of failed
mbrds soon. The last time this happened it was faulty electrolyte but,
noting that HP has identified Nichicon as a "bad" supplier, it could be
some other issue this time - Nichicon is supposedly a well regarded
supplier.

--
Rgds, George Macdonald

Tony Hill wrote:
> As someone who has experienced this exact issue on my home PC (using
> an MSI K7N420 motherboard) as well as having seen it at work on some
> systems, I know that the issue is serious and can be a real pain in
> the ass. It's good to see that Dell is finally owning up and fixing
> their defective system boards, though I would like it if HP, IBM and
> all the motherboard companies would do the same.
>

Yeah, I think the issue occurred on my Asus A7V as well. But the ECS
K7S5A that replaced it has been running like a rock for 5 years now, almost.

As for Dell, there's suspicions that Dell is using it as an excuse for
covering up some dismal earnings problems that they experienced this
quarter. You see these "one time charges" cropping up over and over
again in companies that are not doing so well, it's a way of telling
their shareholders that it was just a freak occurrance that couldn't be
helped, but next quarter this will be all behind them. I mean it's
better to tell them that they had one-time problems with capacitors than
to tell them that they have long-term problems with not having AMD
systems to sell.

Yousuf Khan