I can confirm that this does in fact happen from time to time and is usually a problem with excessive dust (usually tar) buildup. A long time ago when I was working for the Geek Squad we had a customer bring in a PC and had stated that it had caught on fire. It was very obvious to me that the PSU was the part that had failed (you could see literally where there had been burns inside the PSU to the top of the case. User decided to replaced the PSU and the case and the PC ran just fine again. PSU failures are definitely not a rare occurrence, and also real friends don't let friends take there PC's to GS, although this probably goes without saying. ~Andrew On 6/22/2009, "Carl Wilhelm Soderstrom" <chrome at real-time.com> wrote: >On 06/22 01:44 , Mike Miller wrote: >> I assume that "wining the lottery" meant that ps failure is exceedingly >> rare. That guy was nuts. I've lost several over the years and two were >> on machines I bought at Gen Nan. > >The discussion of dead power supplies reminds me of this cartoon. > >http://www.customerssuck.com/strip/index.php?date=2009-01-25 > >The story behind it is amusing as well: > >http://www.customerssuck.com/board/showthread.php?p=468649#post468649 > >Yes, apparently power supplies can shoot flames, reputedly hot enough to set >someone's shirt on fire. (Probably just a bit of smoldering really... but a >good cautionary tale nonetheless). > > >(For other strange computer tales, consider the computer that the user fed >rice to http://www.customerssuck.com/strip/index.php?date=2009-02-01. Yes, >computers really are magic.) > >-- >Carl Soderstrom >Systems Administrator >Real-Time Enterprises >www.real-time.com > >_______________________________________________ >TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota >tclug-list at mn-linux.org >http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list