Removing and Changing Capacitors

I replace capacitors all the time. The hardest part is when you get a dry hole-some connections might be internal, so you have to have the solder fill the hole. You need to remove the stubs like the last guy said, then heat the solder in the hole and push the new one in.

<font color=blue>You're posting in a forum with class. It may be third class, but it's still class!</font color=blue>

That's what I was wondering. No way in hell it was an accident. Not if the motherboard is otherwise fine!

-- Ah sh*t! sys64738 --

Thanks everyone, it sounds like a pretty big job that I'm not looking forward to. Maybe I'll just upgrade to a P4 motherboard though I feel like I really don't need so much power. My highest priority would be more bandwidth than a 56K connection.

I removed the capacitors because I was told by a Dell tech support person that my modem line noise problem was most likely due to bad capacitors. There is a high pitch electrical humming sound in the background when I dial up on that computer and it slows my surfing on the net to a crawl and it often just freezes. I tried switching cords, moving my computer around, used different wires, different hard drive and even put in another modem which works perfectly on the computer I'm using. There's nothing left it could be but the motherboard or the capacitors.

Nothing like that happens with my other computer that I'm using that I have plugged into the same outlets.

The capacitors are not leaking and there is no outward sign but I have also been told that there doesn't have to be an outward sign to have a bad capacitor.

I've noticed that other computers sometimes have 30 capacitors on the motherboard and I have been told that not having enough capacitors on the board could cause line noise as well.

I wonder if there is such a thing as a capacitor inside the power supply box. Maybe that's what's bad. Who knows, it's a real mystery. I may be making an assumption and the problem may not even be a bad capacitor but I have tried so many other things and nothing helped.