Hi guys,
TL;DR - What have you used to successfully clean PCIe & memory slots
I'm knocking together a PC from junk I have lying around. If it works, I'll replace my firewall with it. The motherboard I selected has a core 2 duo on it, and originally failed for unknown reasons. Symptoms = no response of any kind to anything. I replaced the power supply, and then the MB to get things going quickly.
Anyway, I thought I'd fiddle around with it on the bench and see if it was really dead or not. Turns out that cleaning the memory and PCI slots, wiggling the RAM and the video card has brought it to life. It seems to be working flawlessly at the moment, but has refused to boot a couple of times. Boot issues have been solved by more wiggling.
So, I guess that there is some light corrosion or dirt on some pins somewhere. Not surprising. I'm not sure how old the MB is, but it was on for essentially 100% of its life, and the dust around here is pretty nasty stuff. (city, diesel)
I have tried cleaning with IPA on a cloth and a stick. Not ideal, but I can't think of a better way. A wipe with 1200 grit maybe?