Good tech support?

[dustysky]

Does anyone have a good ACTIVE website that might be able to answer a computer question??

 

[KathyTX]

Depends on what kind of computer question you have... if you can describe the question, I can try to point you to a place to find an answer!

 

[dustysky]

Ok, here is what I need to ask:

I need help from the pro's and I am crossing my fingers for good news....
I have an HP media center laptop, about a month ago it got very hot, turned off and since then I have not been able to get it back on.
Here is what happens:

When I plug the power cord into the computer, it sizzles and starts to smoke.
It it POSSABLE that this is the power supply and that the entire computer is NOT destroyed??

Either way can anyone tell me what something like this would cost to repair??

 

[dustysky]

I should add that it smokes from the power jack, I did open the computer up to clean the fans and I can see that the power jack is a little "box" ....

looks like the ones in this link:
http://www.laptopjacks.com/view_part.php?id=HP152116

 

[ktpool]

If it hasn't powered up on battery power, I would bet that one of these 2 things is wrong:

bad power cord and fried your internal power supply
the laptop got hot and ruined your hard drive (which is actually an issue with latops 1-3 years old).

What I would do (and I am in tech support) is search the web to see if there are any known issues with your make/models power supplies. Dell had a big problem about a year ago. HP may replace it for free if it was recalled.

If you can't get any satisfaction from HP, I would order a power cord from e-bay or somewhere cheap and see if it powers up your laptop.

If you have to take it in for service, I would take it in for an estimate. You will then have to weigh what that is vs. buying a new one. How old is your laptop?

 

[KathyTX]

Yikes...

Is it POSSIBLE that only the power supply is affected?
Yep, it's possible

But I think the only way to know for sure is to have a tech open the case and have a look.

If it does turn out to be just the power supply, I would expect the repair to be pretty inexpensive (in the $100-150 ballpark for a notebook.)

You can Google "bad power supply smoke" and get an idea of what you might be dealing with.

 

[JudicialTyranny]

I work in the computer industry (and have for the past 21 years).

In your situation, your questions are about a specific piece of hardware, so your best bet is to go to the HP web site. They have a forum there where you can post questions.

Use this URL: http://welcome.hp.com/country/us/en/support.html?pageDisplay=support

Click on Notebooks & Tablet PC's, then just keep drilling down to your model. When you reach the page for your model, there should be a "Support Forums" link under "Resources" on that page. That will take you to the forums, which you can search and/or post questions.

I've received help there with a HP printer problem and server hardware problem.

For general help, my #1 A+ resource is the Usenet newsgroup archive at http://groups.google.com. I find this invaluable. I use it practically every day. By doing a search, I can often find answers to just about any question (computer or not) based on past postings.

If you don't find your answer on the HP forums or on a groups.google.com search, you can post something to the newsgroups via Google.

The relevent newsgroups you would be interested in using are:

comp.sys.hp.hardware
HP Laptop Help Support

 

[KathyTX]

Excellent links, JT!

 

[dustysky]

Thanks for all the great in-put, JT I will check out those links this afternoon.