Finally diagnosed a boot loop after 2 hours of guessing

Client brought in an old Dell Optiplex 3020 from their auto shop near Denton. Kept restarting every 30 seconds. Turns out a swollen capacitor near the RAM slot was shorting the board. Replaced it with a spare from a donor board and it fired right up. Anyone else keep dead boards just for parts?

2 comments

2 Comments

patking5d ago

Man that brings back memories. Had a similar issue with an old HP board where a cap bulged so bad it actually lifted the solder pad off the board. Tried to fix it with a jumper wire but just made it worse. Ended up tossing it in the bin and grabbing a working one off eBay for 20 bucks.

noah9144d ago

Oh man, I feel your pain with those lifted pads. What ended up working for me on an old Dell board was something kinda janky but it held. I scraped away a tiny bit of the solder mask right next to the lifted pad to expose the trace, then used a bit of super glue to tack the lifted pad back down flat first. Once that dried, I soldered a small wire from the cap leg directly to that exposed trace, not even trying to use the pad itself. Covered it with hot glue and it actually ran stable for like another two years before I finally upgraded. Your mileage may vary, but that trick saved me from tossing a board I really needed at the time.