Hey gang,
This week I came home from a day of running errands to a disaster. There was a storm in my area, and evidently it caused a power surge. Now I am not certain of this, but this what I found.
My Modem, Wifi router, were all non functional and did not reset properly. Basically, they did not display correct lights and refused to reset. One or more lights stayed lit, and would not change, or be detected by other equipment. My PC refuses to turn on, as well as my pc speaker. Here is the strange part, most of these items was on a seperate surge protector and seperate outlets. I even had a speaker bar in a seperate room refuse to turn on. As far as I can guess it seems like it was a power surge. It baffles me that these items were all on surge protectors, and even still on seperate outlets.
Needless to say I am hurting bad, as my pc was pretty much the most expensive thing in my house, and its for all intents a brick at this point. The PC is an alienware X51 and it was a combined christmas gift from my entire family for passing my national emergency medical technician practicals and exams. It is around 1 year old and out of warranty. Obviously. Don't these things always happen as soon as the warranty goes away. I have tried to determine what happened, but to no avail. Here is what I have tried. I have disconnected the pc externally from everything, and inspected the internal components and I see no physical damage. I have removed ever component save the CPU and reseated the components to no effect. I have perused the FAQS and website suggestions for my pc. I have followed those steps to no effect as well. I know its a long shot, but I was wondering if anyone in the family has had this happen or something similar. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated. Even if its bad news any additional information would be helpful so I dont waste time or money I don't have.
I was anticipating spending a couple hundred dollars of my meager savings to repair the pc, when I got another surprise. My significant other has just found out she is pregnant and I will be a dad for second time 8 years after the birth of my son. Needless to say this was a huge surprise, and we are eagerly awaiting the birth of our child. However, this obviously tanked my plans to splurge several hundred bucks on my computers repairs. It was pretty much liquidated in paying for the inital doctors visits, prenatal care scripts, and misc baby prep. So my repair fund is basically gone. I'm hoping someone can point me to some low cost repair solutions or any ideas of things to try to bring my pc back to life. I'm pretty sure this topic will get very little replies, but as you can tell with my horror story, I'm desperate to try most anything at this point.
Thanks for taking the time to peruse my story, and any help or commiseration is greatly appreciated.
Prae
Update:
In my effort to see what I could do I contacted alienware tech support to gain this gem of information. There are not parts for purchase for my model of pc. So even if I find out what is damaged, I will not be able to replace it. The likely of finding small factor parts for the x51 not from alienware doesn't thrill me. The option they offered, 300 dollar repair by sending in the pc and hoping it could be fixed. no refunds obviously and that is BEFORE parts and labor. With that option not possible, I went to the local repair route and tried the geek squad at best buy. And they added this customer service gem. 70 dollars to take a look at the pc, if I get repaired the 70 dollars is put toward the repair bill. However, if they cannot repair the pc, or order the parts to repair the pc then I paid 70 bucks for them to tell me they cant help me.
So moving down the list, Ive tried my insurance company to see if I could file on my renters insurance. However, they are not open on the weekend and I have to try to get a hold of them during the week when I am out work. boy this sounds fun. Plus it looks like in my paperwork there is a 250 deductible on claims, and that will probably sink that option as well. Here's hoping someone has an idea.