Yes, it happens to me: Occasionally my computer dies. And, yes, even I whip out a copy of my own book, Troubleshooting & Maintaining Your PC All-In-One For Dummies to look up an answer.

The problem started last Thursday on my main writing PC. The computer seized. Dead mouse. Dead keyboard. Lost work.

I had just installed a new mouse, so I blamed the mouse. That’s a common problem-solution: Changes in a computer lead to trouble. The old mouse died, so I figured perhaps the new mouse — a Microsoft Wireless mouse 5000-something — was to blame. So I swapped out another mouse.

No dice.

The computer crashed hard five times on Thursday.

Next step: See if the problem is software or hardware.

I started the PC in Safe Mode. No problems It stayed in Safe Mode overnight and didn’t crash. That procedure didn’t prove whether I had a software or hardware problem, only that Windows itself wasn’t to blame.

Next I fired up the Performance Monitor to see whether there was a memory leak.

Nope. No memory leak. Then the PC went into its screen saver and POOF! Another crash.

I was baffled. I really couldn’t figure out what was causing the crash, and I’d already lost one day’s worth of work and one whole chapter on my current book.

The crashes seemed too random, not repeatable. So it was looking like a hardware problem. Then I finally figured it out: I started up a game of Freecell. The PC didn’t even survive the opening card-dealing animation. It stopped hard.

Upon restarting the computer, I ran Freecell again. Same problem.

Restarting in Safe Mode, I tried running Freecell. It wouldn’t run in Safe Mode because the graphics drivers weren’t loaded. So I attempted to download new drivers, but the drivers were all up-to-date.

The next step was to check the graphics card itself. So I turned the PC off, unplugged it, and opened the case.

Sure enough, the graphics card, which came with the system (four years ago), showed that all five of the capacitors onboard had failed. Each one had a “hat” or a tiny bulge at the top. Several of them were leaking acid, detectable as orange gunk in the bulging grooves on top. The cause of my PC’s crashes were obvious: The video adapter card had failed.

A capacitor is like a tiny battery. The motherboard on my writing PC had been replaced a few years back, and it had the same issue: Under-rated capacitors that failed (replete with bulging tops). When capacitors are under-rated, they can literally boil over, causing the bulging tops and leaky orange acid.

The replacement video adapter I got at Staples didn’t work, so I returned it. Curiously, Staples doesn’t stock a lot of video cards any more. An employee told me it’s because most people have laptops now and few of them buy video cards. The assortment available was weak, but Staples accepted the return with no hassle.

When the new video adapter didn’t work, I went out to the boneyard and grabbed a dual-monitor DVI card that was sitting in an old PC. It worked like a charm, and after Windows Update found the drivers, I attached two monitors to the system and have been using it ever since.

The key to troubleshooting any PC is patience. Try one thing, then another. Eventually you’ll figure out the problem and get your computer back up and running, hopefully without spending a lot of money. Because I had an old PC with an old-but-still-good graphics adapter card, the total cost to fix my PC’s problem was zero dollars.