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1.25 Ghz eMacs Plagued By Capacitor Problems

Reader Robert wrote into share the problems of his employed with faulty capacitors in a large crop of 1.25 Ghz eMacs, most purchased between July and Sept. 2004. About July/August of last year, we began seeing a pattern of failures – garbled video, system freezes (like in the OS 9 days – very uncharacteristic of […]
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Reader Robert wrote into share the problems of his employed with faulty capacitors in a large crop of 1.25 Ghz eMacs, most purchased between July and Sept. 2004.

About July/August of last year, we began seeing a pattern of failures - garbled video, system freezes (like in the OS 9 days - very uncharacteristic of OS X). We first troubleshot this problem as software - reinstalling, reapplying combo updates, et. al. We found that leaving the screen saver turned off seemed to reduce, but not eliminate, the frequency of failures. One machine was luckily repaired a month out of warranty, but we've had 3 more fail since then (and I'm sure we'd find more defective machines if we took them apart and started examining motherboards).

At the same time, his company's Dell OptiPlexes started to fail; some searching uncovered that this was a known issue with Dells of the time. They popped open the broken eMacs, and the same problem with those machines.

We examined the afflicted machines, and sure enough, the capacitors were bulging or broken/leaking. Dell came right out and replaced all of the afflicted machines, warranty or no.

Apple does have a warranty extension program for iMac G5s but nothing for the eMac. It's a big problem when it's present, and judging from continued discussion at MacFixIt and MacInTouch, it's not uncommon, either.

Robert reports an Apple engineer did talk with him briefly, but he's heard nothing for a few months. It's a shame that an industry-wide issue is hitting Macs these days.