Fallout from the 2003-2005 Dell Bad Caps Scandal

[FlyingPenguin]

Like those of us in the tech biz didn't already know that Dell and all these other companies weren't lying through their teeth to avoid replacing PCs with bad caps?

Granted it's not like Dell wasn't the only one (there were a couple of major enthusiast mobo manufacturers like Asus that were in denial about bad caps, and Antec flat out refused to admit there was a problem with bad caps in their PSUs), but yeah I suppose when Michael Dell finally realized he might have to replace MILLIONS of PCs, he freaked and went into denial mode. Much as I hated the quality of HP PCs at that time, I have to give them credit that they're one of the few who managed to get a handle on the bad caps issue early.

I still like Dell, and I still think they make good desktop & server PCs although they've lost me on laptops. I'll take an Acer or Asus over a Dell any day. I also like Dell's business on-site warranty.

Now although Dell is certainly in the wrong, lawyers being the animals they are, there's a fair amount of BS in that lawsuit. The contention of "data loss" in the lawsuit is rather bogus. Bad caps on the mobo aren't going to necessarily cause data loss (not directly, although yes indirectly due to down-time). I never saw a system that died due to bad caps lose it's data.

Nor have I ever heard of a PC catching fire due to bad caps (maybe - and this is a stretch - if a cap fails in the PSU and shorts out). A bad cap just stops filtering and the mobo dies.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/techn ... ll.html?hp

[normalicy]

You mean that they're still denying it? I bet they have just been hoping to stall long enough so the repercussions are minimal.

I've actually had a number of computers come through with data loss because of bad caps. It wasn't complete loss, but corrupted data. Still, if the right file gets corrupted, bam, big money.

[canton_kid]

In a round about way there can be major data loss I think.
Look at all the boards I have lost over the years now. When they go the same exact board is no longer available so that means upgrading to something newer, then the version of Windows does not work! That means a fresh O/S install, finding all the old apps and re-installing those also, lets hope you put everything in the same place or the programs won't be finding the files for some apps also.

I think most the Bad Caps issues were mostly around the W2K days with tons of W2K systems still in use even if XP had been released, so no easy recovery stuff for swapping a M/B in W2K like XP may have had.

Although technically the data may have been on the drive still, if it was not usable or you can not find it, then it is lost data.
I lost allot of data when I had to upgrade to new boards, it was still there somewhere, but I lost it and could not find it for a very long time! LOL

[FlyingPenguin]

Bad caps era was around 2002 - 2006. XP was released in 2002 but I'm sure there were still a lot of 2K systems.

Since I have a lot of business customers, I have seen a LOT of mobos fail with bad caps and I have never had any trouble recovering files from the HDD. Sure sometimes the mobo fails in the middle of a write operation and may corrupt a sector, but that's nothing that Spinrite followed by a scandisk can't fix.

[eGoCeNTRoNiX]

The only time I've ever lost data due to bad caps was when an IWill 133 went out on me... But it's because I was using the raid controller and couldn't get a replacement board..

eGo

[normalicy]

The major problem really was that the customer kept trying to use the computer to the point where it would no longer boot. By that point, many files had been corrupted. But like I said, I was still able to recover about 99% of everything.