When Good Capacitors Go Bad

If it has not happened to you yet, in all likelihood you will someday experience it. You are going to push the button to turn your computer on and nothing will happen. This is why we recommend a desktop replacement policy of three to four years. In that timeframe, your operating system will probably be due for replacement, your desktop applications will probably go through a replacement cycle, and your line of business application will probably need updating as well.

Most of our clients just want a system that works. Some of our clients want to know more. So, here it is:

The three green cylinders on the left (below and to the left of the pink item) are capacitors. They are actually GOOD capacitors. See the shiney, silver tops? The tops are flat and the electrolyte in the capacitors is properly contained.

Now that you have been introduced to good capacitors, let's take a look at their counterparts:

Yes, you guessed it. The black cylinders on the right are BAD capacitors. The corosive electrolyte has leaked out of the top of the capacitors, causing them to malfunction. The tops have bulged and the liquid is slowly leaking out.

The mainboard above is in a PC that will not power up. Before the PC died, it was acting very eratically. Sometimes, it would just shut down on its own for no apparent reason. Sometimes, it would freeze up - basically unresponsive to any user input. The data is still intact on the computer hard drive but it will require removing the drive and placing it in a USB enclosure or placing it in a working PC to extract the important files.

This brings up another important point: your hard drive has a limited lifetime too! What does this mean? It means you better have a working backup or some means of replicating your files to a secure location away from your PC.

If your computer (or worse yet, your server) is acting a little odd, start planning for a safe replacement of your desktops and servers. You could always look into our ITC Cloud 9 System to make your desktops and server a lot less important (or completely unneeded).

Remember, computer hardware prices are always getting lower but the value of your data (your important computer files) should keep increasing. Just like your car is a replaceable item, the car's contents - you or your family are not replaceable. Don't lose site of the value of the data contained on your computer systems because of the decreasing cost of desktop hardware.