Dead Dell

[Jim147]

I have a Dimension 4400 that was brought in this week. It had a blown 6.3v x 3300 cap.

I replaced it and checked across the other caps in that circuit. I've changed power supply and processor and tried unhooking everything. Still no start and no diagnostic lights.

I'm out of ideas at the moment.

I hate to pull all the caps and test them out of the circuit. Anyone have any other ideas?

jim

[grislyatoms]

Dell sent out a bunch of mb's with bad caps a few years ago, specifically in their Optiplex product line. There are probably more bad caps on the mb.

Might want to contact them to see about a replacement?

[RocketMan]

I've seen a few of those where the failing caps were not the only problem.  Other damage was done when the caps went south.  Replacing the mobo ended up being the only choice.
For a 4400, that really doesn't make economic sense, although the customer sometimes decides they want it anyway.  I had one or two make that choice.

[Jim147]

I'll try running back through it this evening. If I don't find anything I'll see what they want to do.

jim

[RocketMan]

One last thing:  It sometimes pays to replace all the Vrm caps, not just those that show obvious problems like swelling or leakage.  The only effective way to tell if a Vrm cap has failed is to measure it with an ESR meter.  A bad cap might look normal and show proper capacitance on a cap meter, but still be way off on ESR.  If that's the case, the Vrm circuits won't work.

[Jim147]

My good cap meter only goes up to 200 µF so it is out for using on the 3300 µF caps.

I found out tonight they have one or two more systems just like it not in use. That would have been nice to know. A swap of the hard drives and a reactivate of XP should have it back in business.

jim

Found the micro code.