Symptom
Some processors are overheating due to misalignment of the heatsink and processor pair. Overheating can cause a system to hang, lockup, and damage the system processor.

Affected configurations
IBM NetVista 2273, 2283, 6043, 6274, 6290, 6596, 6790, 6791, 6792, 6793, 6794, 6795, 6824, 6832, 6833, 8301, 8303, 8304, 8305, 8306, 8307, 8308, 8309, 8310, 8311, 8312, 8313, 8314, and 8315 systems configured with an Intel Pentium 4 processor

Details
There have been a number of incidents with Intel Pentium 4 systems where processors overheat due to heatsink orientation. The removal of a heatsink causes the thermal interface material to break apart and randomly stick to either the processor or the heatsink. This could be seen by looking at the bottom of the heatsink or the top of the processor. Interface material will appear on the heatsink, while a void will be seen on the mating location on the CPU, and vice versa. Upon reattachment, the thermal interface material must be mated properly during reattachment of the original heatsink and the original processor.

For Intel Pentium 4 systems, a heatsink can be reused only as long as the original heatsink and original processor are kept together as a pair. Furthermore, the heatsink must be mated with its original processor in the same orientation, not 180 out-of-phase (the thermal interface material will not be uniform). If a new processor is to be installed, a new heatsink must be used to ensure complete coverage of the thermal interface material.