One of my users here at work runs a Dell Optiplex GX270. It’s a good workstation. Plenty of RAM, processing power, and disk space for a plain old workstation.
Recently, it started getting all wonky (yes, that’s a technical term). It was weird. It seemed to be an Office issue - while sorting email or using Word, then system would just turn off.
No Blue Screen of Death, no error, no entry in the Event Log. Not a goddamn thing.
Well, I said screw it. He’s one of the last guys to be running Windows/Office 2000, so I figured it would be time to bump him up to XP/2003.
No deal. Still wonky. So I try reverting to earlier network / video drivers. Nope. Other nics/vid cards. Nope. All CPU/RAM/HDD tests came up clean. No overheating issues.
Finally, Google reveals unto me that this line of systems from Dell had bad capacitors. They apparently bulge. I open the case, and sure enough, thems capacitors are a-bulgin’.
So I hop on the phone yesterday with Dell, and next thing I know, I’m swapping out a mobo. It’s not new - it’s a refurb, which makes sense. The entire motherboard, minus the 5 bulging capacitors, is fine. I reckon they’ll just remove those 5 and replace them with good ones when they get the board I’m sending back and ship it off to some other poor bastard with bulging capacitors.
April 15th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
Those Maxtor thinline drives won’t last long either