[Thinkpad] MS software killed my drive ??

[David Ross]

> My wife's PIII 900, about 6 years old, shut down with the smell
> of burning electrical stuff.

Almost surely power supply, especially if it is OEM and rated at or
below 300W.

> Coming to the scene about 4 minutes later, I found that the
> power supply was hot, the HD was quite warm, and most
> everything else was warm.  Powering up does nothing.  Not a
> sound.

The HD is always warm on a desktop.  However, if you are risk-averse,
when you hook up the new power supply don't have the HD attached -
either just boot to the BIOS (if your machine's bios has diagnostics),
or boot to a diagnostic CD (like Hiren's boot disk, which has PC Doctor
on it)

> So, my next step will be to replace the power supply with
> one the same rating as the old one

No.  Choose the highest-rated PS you can justify.  Many desktops come
with inadequate 230W power supplies, you should never use anything less
than 300W, and 400 is better.  I' ve replaced 2 power supplies in the
last month, I used a 400W and a 500W supply.

David