Hello to all you wonderful techies. This is my first time ever posting on a forum, but this site has given me a glimmer of hope. Could I be suffering from the bad caps plague? I have much experience soldering so if it is the caps, I might elect to DIY; you make it sound so easy. Here is the sad story of "My 3 computers". I'll make it as brief as possible. All were purchased used.
1)Compaq 5202, had several near death experiences, and currently will not POST at all. The HD is okay, but on power up there is no logo screen, Monitor goes to the amber led mode, HD starts to read then stops. It has a gerry rigged power supply, which worked wonderfully after the stock Compaq one died.
It powers down after pressing and holding the power button for a few seconds, in the normal way. All voltage readings done with my VOM are normal. Could the problem be the caps?
2) Emachines 466i was a wonderful replacement for the Compaq with MS Windows 2K Pro OS but had some weird problems right off the bat. Like random "small memory dumps", then after long periods of being not used at all (because I finally acquired computer #3 with XP) when I would fire it up to update the security software, etc. the HD would display about 2 lines of Martian (or maybe from Uranus) lettering, without loading OS. At this time it seemed to have okay POST and I thought the HD was near death but on reboot everything was fine. Then the biggest problem yet- a blue screen of death "STOP error" that wouldn't go away suggesting that I might have a virus and to use CHKDSK /F which was pretty hard to do since the freaking computer was dead. But alas, I used my wonderful later model Emachine C1641 with Windows XP, installing the 466i HD as a slave, to do the CHKDSK with Fix. This seemed to work, as I reinstalled it in it's Emachine 466i box; it booted and ran beautifully. It shut down normally and seemed like completely restored.
I felt like a genius for less than 24 hours. Then when during the next boot right in the middle, of loading the OS, I did the biggest duffus thing in the world. I accidently shut of the power strip the system was tapped into. Hard power failure. After that, it tried to restart but is now doing exactly what the Compaq does, i.e. NO POST, NO LOGO SCREEN, (read above #1) Could it be the caps or have I killed my motherboard somehow by accidently shutting off the power?
Then I found your site. You folks are my kind of peeps!.
On to #3, the Emachine C1461, has been wonderful until today, I decided to put the HD from the 466i back in as a slave so I could at least retrieve any data from it that I needed. Then I saw that to my horror some of the caps are bulging, just like in your pics of bad caps. Then, as if on cue, when I went to fire it up, it was doing the same thing as the other 2, NO POST, NO Logo screen, etc,. After I went to the bathroom to throw up and after praying heavily, and after reseating every freaking cable, and card on the mobo(except) the CPU, I tried again, and now it was giving me lip, in the form of a series of long, loud, beeps, that were almost deafening. After trying one more time to reseat everything, she finally booted up, with one small problem, the date went backward to 1/1/2002. All seems okay now with the Emachine C1641 but I know it too is on borrowed time since the caps even look bad to me. I also noted that it has a Bestec PSU, which several of you guys have said are junk.
Here, finally, are my big questions, knowing that several of the forum threads have declared Emachines to be worthless, do you think it is the caps on the Compaq 5202, and the Emachine 466i, or is there a CMOS , BIOS reset needed. If the vote is, "IT'S THE CAPS!" is it even worth it to replace them on an Emachine mobo or the CompaQ?
Thanks for your time and help in these matters. I am willing to learn more always.
1)Compaq 5202, had several near death experiences, and currently will not POST at all. The HD is okay, but on power up there is no logo screen, Monitor goes to the amber led mode, HD starts to read then stops. It has a gerry rigged power supply, which worked wonderfully after the stock Compaq one died.
It powers down after pressing and holding the power button for a few seconds, in the normal way. All voltage readings done with my VOM are normal. Could the problem be the caps?
2) Emachines 466i was a wonderful replacement for the Compaq with MS Windows 2K Pro OS but had some weird problems right off the bat. Like random "small memory dumps", then after long periods of being not used at all (because I finally acquired computer #3 with XP) when I would fire it up to update the security software, etc. the HD would display about 2 lines of Martian (or maybe from Uranus) lettering, without loading OS. At this time it seemed to have okay POST and I thought the HD was near death but on reboot everything was fine. Then the biggest problem yet- a blue screen of death "STOP error" that wouldn't go away suggesting that I might have a virus and to use CHKDSK /F which was pretty hard to do since the freaking computer was dead. But alas, I used my wonderful later model Emachine C1641 with Windows XP, installing the 466i HD as a slave, to do the CHKDSK with Fix. This seemed to work, as I reinstalled it in it's Emachine 466i box; it booted and ran beautifully. It shut down normally and seemed like completely restored.
I felt like a genius for less than 24 hours. Then when during the next boot right in the middle, of loading the OS, I did the biggest duffus thing in the world. I accidently shut of the power strip the system was tapped into. Hard power failure. After that, it tried to restart but is now doing exactly what the Compaq does, i.e. NO POST, NO LOGO SCREEN, (read above #1) Could it be the caps or have I killed my motherboard somehow by accidently shutting off the power?
Then I found your site. You folks are my kind of peeps!.
On to #3, the Emachine C1461, has been wonderful until today, I decided to put the HD from the 466i back in as a slave so I could at least retrieve any data from it that I needed. Then I saw that to my horror some of the caps are bulging, just like in your pics of bad caps. Then, as if on cue, when I went to fire it up, it was doing the same thing as the other 2, NO POST, NO Logo screen, etc,. After I went to the bathroom to throw up and after praying heavily, and after reseating every freaking cable, and card on the mobo(except) the CPU, I tried again, and now it was giving me lip, in the form of a series of long, loud, beeps, that were almost deafening. After trying one more time to reseat everything, she finally booted up, with one small problem, the date went backward to 1/1/2002. All seems okay now with the Emachine C1641 but I know it too is on borrowed time since the caps even look bad to me. I also noted that it has a Bestec PSU, which several of you guys have said are junk.
Here, finally, are my big questions, knowing that several of the forum threads have declared Emachines to be worthless, do you think it is the caps on the Compaq 5202, and the Emachine 466i, or is there a CMOS , BIOS reset needed. If the vote is, "IT'S THE CAPS!" is it even worth it to replace them on an Emachine mobo or the CompaQ?
Thanks for your time and help in these matters. I am willing to learn more always.
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