Anyone with Dell basic warranty experiences/advice?

[ibk]

Bought a Dimension desktop 3 months ago with 1yr basic warranty. High winds caused the power in house to go off while comp was in sleep or standby (not sure what it's called) and came back on again before I had time to react. Now comp is completly dead when I try to switch it on. It was plugged into surge supressor which was included in the system configuration when I bought it. Another much older comp, 2 monitors and printer were running and plugged into the same surge supressor. Only problem is with the DIM. I hope it's just the PSU.

Anyone have any experience with Dell warranty service? What should I tell them? Any other advice would be appreciated.

 

[Gunbuster]

Just dont tell them about the surge/brownout/act of good and you will be ok

 

[ibk]

If it was a surge wouldn't other stuff have been affected, including the surge supressor? And wouldn't they be able to tell?

 

[Gunbuster]

Call them, trouble shoot with a CSR drone, get a tech send out with parts (you have the in home repair warranty?)

The reason you want an inhome tech is if it is a surge they are much less likley to care, they just want to slam the parts in and finish calls/make quota for the day

 

[ibk]

Thanks for the advice.
I also wanted to avoid having a tech sent as it'd be difficult for me to be home btwn 8&5 on business day.
Tried replacing CMOS battery, which made no difference.
Searched the forum and found link to Tom's Hardware 13 PSU review where I read:

"If power supplies become too hot as a result of overloading or a voltage drop, the devices should switch off automatically. This prevents the hardware from being damaged. The user also has the option of removing those components responsible for the overload. ...What's really unacceptable is when the devices permanently halt operation due to overloading and then refuse to start again even following a cooling-off period.
In these cases where the causes of the overload are not apparent, the only option for the user is to buy a new power supply."

So I disconnected the DVD burner & combo drive and the comp turned on & booted. Reconnected the drives and everything's working fine.

I feel very thankful for Anandtech and all the people who post - makes living with computers much easier.