It was running great up till a few months ago when, one night, something inside went bang and there may have been some smoke. Ever since, the computer boots up to the desktop screen, portions of which are distorted and pixellated, and eventually stalls.
Capacitor Explosion is what this sounds like. Open the computer and look for a capacitor that blew its top.
More info here as to likely cause of why for your computer:
http://www.badcaps.net/index.php?pageid=causesPicture linked below from this link:
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1102467-bad-capacitors-how-to-spot-them/**If this is the motherboard that the capacitor blew on then you might as well plan on buying a new computer unless your good with a soldering iron and can replace the capacitor(s) with correct value and voltage rating which are troubled. The damage when the capacitor died may be permanent. There is probably some pretty nasty ripple on the circuit that the capacitor left from, however other capacitors still in the circuit that are dead or dying can cause electrical noise as they vent and act like current draw oscillators vs holding a charge for when the extra current is needed as well as to smooth out ripple.
Back about 8 years ago I had a bunch of Dell and HP computers failing left and right due to the capacitor plague. Most of the capacitors that failed were located around the CPU by the VRMs however this also affected power supplies as well with these bad capacitors. Some video cards were affected by this, but its more common for motherboards surrounding the CPU and some power supplies.
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