#1 is a known problem. Do a Google search for leaky or bulging capacitors on Dell Optiplex machines...
We've had that happen on 3 of ours. Dell replaced two of them (they were still under warranty, but they've been known to replace them even on out-of-warranty systems). The third was one purchased and "modified" by NEC. Our NEC vendor scrounged up a similar system which may or may not fail at any time (it's our voice mail system). Less than 2 months, and we're rid of NEC!!! Intersting story of industrial espionage... An electronics company broke into the databases of a rival to steal their capacitor electrolyte formula. They stole one their competitor was not using as they knew it would result in failing capacitors. The bad guys thought they had the good formula and sold millions of them to MB manufacturers, including MBs used by Dell. -------------------------------------- Richard McClary, Systems Administrator ASPCA Knowledge Management 1717 S Philo Rd, Ste 36, Urbana, IL 61802 217-337-9761 http://www.aspca.org "Micheal Espinola Jr" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote on 05/30/2008 12:34:40 PM: > In light of some of the recent hardware-related oddities posted here, > I thought I'd share two of my own more annoying recent discoveries in > the past 6 months: > > 1. Dell Optiplex GX520's have a motherboard problem. The system will > shut itself off, leaving the user only with an amber flashing power > button light. The motherboard needs to be replaced to correct this > issue. My show has many of these PC's, and it has happened to 4 so > far. This starts are a very infrequent annoyance that becomes more > frequent over time - resulting in not being able to keep the system on > for more than 60 seconds between occurrences. It appears to me to be > a heat sensor problem, but I don't have confirmation on that. > > 2. I don't have a manufacturer commonality for this one, but it > appears to be specific to Serial-ATA. The problem/cause is still > unknown to me, but the result is partition corruption that makes the > drive unreadable without special utilities that can read raw data. > Twice this happened to the same HDD. The other other two instances > were different HDD's from different computers. In each case the > partition info could be reconstructed. It has happened to my own > system at home as well as user systems at work. The only commonality > was that there were all Windows XP systems. > > These are just some things to have recall for if you run into similar > oddities. That is all. > > -- > ME2 > > ~ Upgrade to Next Generation Antispam/Antivirus with Ninja! ~ > ~ <http://www.sunbelt-software.com/SunbeltMessagingNinja.cfm> ~ ~ Upgrade to Next Generation Antispam/Antivirus with Ninja! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbelt-software.com/SunbeltMessagingNinja.cfm> ~
