My Main PC, My Workhorse, Blew Up. Yep! Blew Up When I Powered It Up. Rather Sad.

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 ..by Anura Guruge

I am sure this was a first for me. Though I use PC for long periods a day, I don’t ever recall a computer blowing up on me or fizzling out. I guess I was just lucky.

The computer that blew up was 3.5 years old. Had to replace 3 fans on it a couple of months ago. But it appeared to be doing fine.

I used it for a few hours this morning with no problems. Shut it down around 1 pm since we had a bunch of things to do. We didn’t get back home till about 9 pm. Around 10 pm I pressed the on button to power it up and it went ZAAPPPPP and sparks flew out from the button. Was not a pretty sight. No burning smell. Just light a bulb blowing. I guess it is the power supply. The PC had a fairly brawny, high-end, 700 Watt power supply. Not sure whether it fried the motherboard etc.

I had a backup PC, which is what I am using. Nowhere close to the specs of the original but it has a dual monitor video card and has Windows 7. I had configured it to be as close to the other one in terms of the software. Using Chrome with its auto-synch across machines helped. I was delighted how quickly I could get the backup running. Had to call TDS for a bit of help setting up the Static IP address but they helped out quickly and it was smooth and quick. Installing the HP printer was a bit more hassle. Then remembered how to do that too.

So tomorrow I will call David Nix and see where we go from here. I am bit bummed but doing better than I expected. This PC, a refurbished Lenevo unit from TigerDirect that costs 1/4 the price of the other, does quite well. So maybe the secret is to get a less powerful machine. I will keep you posted.