Signs of MB going bad?

[RegEdit]

I know there's lots of symptoms that could be due to a MB going bad. When a MB is going bad (such as due to bad caps) is it often that you'll get a random blue screen? Or would the screen just go black and the computer restarts on its own?

[compnet]

So many random weird things.. random restart, blue screens, drives not showing up or intermittently, no video, scrambled video, the list goes on..

Any symptom of a bad hard drive, memory, cpu, house, touchpad, keyboard could be a symptom of a bad mobo

[Geech]

Originally Posted by RegEdit

Or would the screen just go black and the computer restarts on its own?

I have seen may ways a mobo can go bad, but bad caps always seems to come to the front. When I had bad caps on my own system, it was a random restart, sometimes you can't even see the cap that's causing the problem. Other times it's just an old system and its like "oh it's old and it's a small leak, that's not that bad..." Bad cap's are always bad...

[RedFoxComp]

Originally Posted by RegEdit

I know there's lots of symptoms that could be due to a MB going bad. When a MB is going bad (such as due to bad caps) is it often that you'll get a random blue screen? Or would the screen just go black and the computer restarts on its own?

For bad caps BSODs are not common. More likely to be random restarts and/or multiple tries to power on, with increasing frequency as the caps dry out.

If the BSOD isn't giving enough info to troubleshoot and it's happening frequently enough, boot into a Linux live CD and test the keyboard, sound, networking etc. + a stress test. If there are no BSODs where it was happening predictably before then it's likely to be software rather than hardware based.

[PCX]

The Earth will shake and the face of death will be etched into the clouds . . . . oh wait, wrong thread. Sorry

[BDNTech]

Since the caps essentially provide a steady stream of power to the gates and switches on the mobo the most likely results of bad caps are power related. Examples are simultaneous shutdown, sometimes with power or battery failure errors, and no response on start-up. If the system is BSODing it would more likely point to corrupt software or drivers, hardware and/or a bad hard drive or hard drive sectors.