I came across a computer today which would not boot properly, it would restart or freeze and take many reboots just to get it started. I found reading on a forum about a little problem called Capacitor Plague. The problem is that a lot of capacitors were manufactured from an incomplete electrolyte formula causing the capacitors to bulge and leak and ultimately fail. This was evident on the motherboard of the computer I was working on. A lot of the capacitors were in fact bulging and some were leaking a rusty colored material on the top of them. Replacing the motherboard fixed the problem. I may spend some time replacing all of the old capacitors with new ones but I don't know if I will ever find the time :)
Peter Parry
