artarama Posted October 8, 2012 Share Posted October 8, 2012 Ok so I hate to mix work and pleasure but... My desktop Lenovo ThinkCentre has started to run super (insert explicative of your choice) slow and without all the IT trouble shooting which is not part of this forum, thank goodness I do have this one question. I opened up the box and noticed three 6.3V, 1000 microfarad electrolytic caps that are on the motherboard are starting to crown and look like they are ready to blow! Could bad caps cause a computer to "slow down" (affect performance) or would the machine just fail when they go? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jhoak Posted October 8, 2012 Share Posted October 8, 2012 As a general rule... No. Failing caps will not effect performance. It depends on where in the circuit they are. I have seen bad caps cause blue screens but only because the chip(s) they were buffering power to went flaky because of bad power. If that machine were brought to me (I do IT for a living) my first look would be for malware or BOT activity. There are any number of free "cleaners" that will work wonders on a sluggish PC. If you want to chat PM me a phone number and I'll be happy to help in any way I can. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mongo171 Posted October 8, 2012 Share Posted October 8, 2012 I know those crowned caps failed on a motherboard I had and the computer wouldn't even boot up. I guess my answer would be yes. Detrimental to the speed of the computer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
artarama Posted October 8, 2012 Author Share Posted October 8, 2012 As a general rule... No. Failing caps will not effect performance. It depends on where in the circuit they are. I have seen bad caps cause blue screens but only because the chip(s) they were buffering power to went flaky because of bad power. If that machine were brought to me (I do IT for a living) my first look would be for malware or BOT activity. There are any number of free "cleaners" that will work wonders on a sluggish PC. If you want to chat PM me a phone number and I'll be happy to help in any way I can. Thanks man that is very generous, PM sent. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marvel Posted October 9, 2012 Share Posted October 9, 2012 We had a couple of Lenovo desktops with bad caps, and they just stopped booting. Although they were both out of warranty, Lenovo replaced the motherboards free of charge becuse it was a defect. btw, they were both personal PCs, one owned by a student and one the home PC of a faculty member. Bruce Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pzannucci Posted October 10, 2012 Share Posted October 10, 2012 Usually the motherboard will be toast if the caps die and will cease to boot. I've also had them pop and start on fire [] Go with jhoak's answer. There can also be a bunch of applications that start up (if you have done any updating) that didn't before. They will eat CPU cycles. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
artarama Posted October 10, 2012 Author Share Posted October 10, 2012 I took jhoak's suggestion and looked online for a good cleaner. I used a couple recommended resister fix programs and subscribed to one (can't remember the names right now) that helped a lot. Still far from "fast as new" but much better. I think I will try to replace these caps at some point just to extend the service life of the unit. It looks like it will be a lot harder to get the mother board out of the case than it will be to change out the caps. Thanks for all the input. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mighty Favog Posted October 11, 2012 Share Posted October 11, 2012 I use a series of registry cleaner/malware/antivirus programs. What one program misses finding wrong, another will usually find. But I use AVG Free version, Spybot, CCleaner and Trend Micro. All free programs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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