BAD CAPACITORS

OK I had this situation with my HP Pavilion A705W its an old computer I believe it was purchased back in 2005. The HP Pavilion A705W’s configuration is not bad at all it is still fast enough for general browsing the internet and emailing also for doing homework. For the most part it was doing well I maxed out the RAM memory to 1GB (not much by today’s standards) and added a case fan to keep things cool. The only thing that went bad after about 4 years or so was the power supply so that was replaced.

So now 3 years later... I noticed that the computer was taking longer to turn ON. Once on the Desktop launching programs seemed to take longer to load. At first I though maybe I had a virus or some kind of adware or malicious program lurking in my computer. After several scans nothing was found (this process takes time). So I thought what else could it be? Just to be through I took a look inside the computer case. Then I saw the bad capacitors on the motherboard most of them were leaking pretty bad couple of the smaller one were just bulge a little.

I gathered all the parts and the tools needed to do the job. I replaced the bad capacitors and since I had the case open I cleaned it out by using canned air. I then hooked everything back up, pressed the power button and... BAM it worked! The computer was working noticeably faster than it was before (back the way I remembered it working).

So in conclusion... don’t rule out the hardware if your computer is running slow especially on older computers. Run the scans first then if the scans find nothing then check inside the case and look at the components on the motherboard. See if there are any failed components. Hope this helps someone... if there is any questions ask in the comment area.

Here are some images of the bad capacitors: