So we own 2 Dell Dimension XPS Machines and they're both about five years old, but we've kept them thus far because the processor speeds and the graphics card have been sufficient to play most of the games we want to play (Portal, Portal, and Portal.) The one I'm at right now has gone through the factory motherboard and about three more, at the steady rate of about one a month. Luckily, we still had a warranty on it. Unfortunately, the other machine is beginning to exhibit the same symptoms (monitor doesnt get signal on boot, no response from USB devices but the cd drives and HDD mysteriously spin up.) This is somehow caused by the capacitors blowing out. Does anyone else out there own a Dimension XPS that does the same thing?

Really in my opinion dell doesn't make anything good. Dell hasn't ever been good to me. Well mabey it will when I get hired as a computer technician.

I'd would say chuck it and get a new one but I don't know what your budget allows.

There are some motherboards that have capacitors that 'swell' when they are going bad.



If they are both the same model XPS, you probably will have the same problem.


Good luck.

DR

This is really an odd coincidence, but one of my friends had a similar problem with his computer's motherboard's capacitors going bad. I'm not 100% sure about which computer he has though.

There was a case of industrial espionage years ago that resulted in flooding the market with electrolytic capacitors that were defective. These capacitors failed on a regular basis prompting the computer industry to start looking for bad caps after the first sign of trouble.

Electrolytic capacitors should have a flat top, caps that have failed or are failing can exhibit a rounded top or leaking fluid at their base.

Yeah, that sounds like what happened. The tech took the motherboard out about three or four times and every time all or most of the caps had the swollen tops that indicated broken/going broken caps. It looks like it was a false alarm this time though because the problem isn't coming back.