HAd a customer come in today, he had just completed a marathon with a major computer manufacturer..
For the past 3 months his computer would occasionaly lockup, or bring up strange errors. After various tech visits and numerous call to tech support. The final sujestion was to update the BIOS.. Now due to his caution, and it being a charge job for the tech (some 100km away) he decided to pay me instead..hehe.

Now to the Crux of the story:
Brand Name PC (Acer)
CPU : Celeron 1100
Mem: 384MB SD-RAM
HDD: 20Gb

While he had said the machine would run for between one and 3 hours before the problem would occure. I couldn't get more than 10 mins before a BSOD..
Tried with a UBD .. same period of time.. b4 a lock
HAd a quick look at the Motherboard before testing the PSU.. Bingo..Cause found..

This is where my warning comes:

His problem?

On All motherboards (well all that I have worked with) The Power supply's are filtered by "Electrolytic Capacitors" .. These are a Aluminium "Can" sheathed on the length in a plastic shrink wrap, leaving a rubber seal end with two "legs" soldered to the Circuit board, the other end is bare and visable to the observer.. (I am getting to it OK)..
In this case and many others in various parts of the world, the bare end of the "Can" had ruptured and the Electrolyte had leaked..
The net result is that the Capacitor is no longer capable of doing its task of filtering the Supply rails.. this leads to Noise/spikes interfering with the operation of the CPU, RAM, and Motherboard Chips.

Most users of quality Motherboards will probably not encounter this problem.. As the problem is partly to do with the quality of the Capacitors themselves. BUT heat, and power fluctuations can cause even the best of these components to fail in this manner.

So next time your computer seems a little Ill.. just check the electro's out.. Just incase..

BTW: good idea for a check, post summer, in your home computers. Especially if they are running long hours..


Cheers

The attached is a Pix of an example of the faulty components.. if it helps for those who don't know an Electrolytic Capacitor from a Torx driver..(one is a Electronic component the other is a"funny looking" star screw driver)