My girlfriend lives in New York (I'm in England) and last November while visiting I built her a computer (Midi
tower case, AMD Athlon 2600+, etc).

Last night she rang me and in a shakey voice said: "The computer went Bang!  There was a loud bang and a smell
of smoke, and now it's dead!"

Apparently a nearby table lamp, fitted with a low-energy flourescent "bulb", went off at the same time, but
came back when switched off/on - I presume the electronics in this freaked when a strange thing happened to
its supply.

Now I've built many machines before, but I've never had one go bang - at least not when they're 6 months
old...

I got her to look around inside, but there's apparently no sign of burning, discolouring, melting or any of
the usual visual accompaniments of a good "Bang"!

I suspect that the power supply (made by Zalman, the people who do the "flower" and other strange CPU coolers)
has given up its magic smoke, but I am 4,000 miles away and can't do any debugging.

How likely do prople think it is that the PSU itself has failed, as against something else shorting?  Bearing
in mind this machine is standing on the floor, so it's unlikely that something *moved* and shorted.

Does anyone know of any friendly, reliable, honest (!) computer repair shops in Queens, NY, who could have a
look at this?  Otherwise she'll be computerless until my next visit in October...

Cheers,

Howard Winter
St.Albans, England

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