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Gateway Computer: Replace Power Supply?
On 30 Apr 2004 15:57:45 -0700, (Jerry Greenberg)
wrote:
When capacitors are mentioned as leaky, they mean "electricaly leaky",
and not physicaly leaky. You will need the proper test instruments to
really determine if a cap is electricaly leaky or not. On some
occasions, they can leak some electrolyte if they were severly
overheated, but this is not very often.
Actually the hoopla over the MB caps was that the caps would
physically leak their electrolyte all over the MB. The impact was
two-fold in that the caps lost their capacitance and the goo would eat
into the traces. I've tossed over a dozen MBs at work so far.
For the original poster, start by checking that all of the fans are
still working. In particular the CPU fan. It's more likely that
you've got a bad fan than a bad power supply. Also beware that the
off-brand $32 power supplies are not exactly high quality. Your
original, even after so many years, is probably a better unit.
You're frequent crashes are probably software related. Given the
vintage, you probably have Win95 or Win98. Both were very buggy and
over time eventually become unstable. Of all the Win9x machines at
work, I've yet to have one make it more than 3 years without reaching
the point where it needed nuked and reinstalled. Of course, now they
get Windows 2000 installed...
-Chris
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