Grey substance around cpu

I have 400Mhz PII, this is a slot type processor with cooling fan attached. The other day I noticed a grey substance sprayed around the CPU area (on ram, video card, and mb).
Has anyone seen this?

Is this a sign of the coolong fan going bad? (no noise and it's still spinning)

Any thoughts, ideals would be appreciated!

Thanks

 

probably not helpful, but...

I doubt this will help you if something is going wrong, but I noticed the exact same thing as you described around a capacitor on my motherboard (a milky gray substance). I theorize it is just dust that is sticking to the surface of the board. I don't think it's harming anything (hopefully) but it certainly isn't helping anything either! I would try cleaning it off myself, but I have another problem on my computer that I want to fix first . If this is not helpful, I'm sorry.

 

Sounds like dust to me.

 

ditto.... dust!