HPE570T = Sparky?

[awaraarawa]

I have an approx 10 month old HPE 570T desktop that has not been tinkered except for the addition of an extra hard drive. Pressing the power button prompted the computer to spit out smoke, sparks and noise from the back of the machine. After the initial fright and reaction of jumping away from the machine, I made a safe recovery and proceeded to investigate what the excitement was all about ..... I thought it was my APC UPS as it proceeded to beep continuously. After unplugging everything from the UPS and resetting it and then plugging in just the CPU and monitor, I proceeded to coax the computer one more time to power up. The reaction was immediately duplicated and I was able to definitely figure out it was the computer and not the UPS. 

While the desktop cost me a pretty penny, the fright from this incident was indeed priceless!

Has anyone experienced this type of a reaction from your desktops? My interaction with HP support was not the best - they were unwilling to accept it for repair if I took out the hard drive (which contained a lot of personal and financial information). So, at an additional investment of time and money, I had to buy additional gear to extract the hard drive and erase it (thankfully, it was still operational). And then I get the machine back with a form letter advising of a replaced power supply and a replaced hard drive (not sure why the hard drive was replaced). No explanation or information on why the machine reacted in the fashion it did and/or what I could/should do to prevent a reoccurence. No explanation why the hard drive was replaced either.

And for me, the naive user, I cannot figure out what else may have been damaged as a result and how I monitor for any issues later on. Can someone on the forum share advice/guidance on the way forward - what should I be keeping an eye out for, any software tools to check the health and performance of the machine and its components, etc. Any tips and suggestions would be welcome. The machine has a TV card built in and I use it to record educational shows for the kids during the week when I am at work. My biggest fear is that the problem could reappear and potentially cause more damage that it idid this time around. TIA for the suggestions. 

[TheOldMan]

While an unfortunate occurrence, there is little that you could have done to stop it.  It sounds like the power supply failed.  As for the hard drive replacement, it could have been a model that was causing problems with others.  Rather than risk a return again, they just replaced the drive and reinstalled the OS to turn it back to "factory fresh".

I know of no software that can assist in watching over such things unless the voltages from the power supply fluctuate before the failure occurs.