The easiest way to tell if you have busted capacitors is to perform a visual inspection. They look like little soda cans. They should be flat and not leaking anything from the top or bottoms. If you do not find any, you can also try swapping out the power supply with one of equal or higher wattage. Some power supply companies got hit with the cheap bad capacitors also. You have to look under the CPU fan shroud for capacitors also. Manually inspect all of them. The ones with an X or a plus on top were the ones most likely to fail. ANY sign of a bulge means it is bad. ANY leaky fluid/paste means it is bad. If all your capacitors look good, then you can try taking out the memory, disconnecting the hard drives and CD/DVD drives and any PC cards and add back one thing at a time to see if the behavior changes any. If it does not, then you have a bad mother board.
This is a known issue with this system. If you open the case, you will most likely find swollen capacitors. I have replaced the motherboard on so many of these computers because it is a design flaw from Dell. Dell had recalled these computers a while ago to replace the motherboard, but it may be too late now. Unfortunately you will need a new motherboard for this computer.
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Not necessarily a design flaw. Someone working at a capacitor plant stole the receipe and made their own capacitors. They flooded the market with them and several manufactures got hit. I have replaced them in Dell, emachine, HP, Compaq and some no name brands also. Hopefully most of them have made it off the market by now.The capacitors look like little soda cans. They should be flat on top and not leakinf any kind of fluid (usually brown). If they are swollen or have burst then they are bad. They can be replaced, but they are not guaranteed to work after replacement due to multi-layer motherboards and the inability of home soldering units to correctly solder the joints.
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