I just ruined my PC! I took the HP Pavilion I bought in the States and plugged it in an 220V outlet in Europe then turned it on. I heard a big pop and smoke came out of the back. I made sure the PC was compatible with 220 voltage but I didn't pay attention to a little switch that needed to be on 230V( there is no instructions from HP in the manual or on the tower itself!) My monitor works fine . Do you think there is a chance I can have this computer repaired at a reasonable cost or at least recover the data on my hardrive? Thank you for your advice.
you probably just blew the power supply.. i would try replacing just that before getting too worried.. -qwik
Make sure you get enough watts (300W is becoming standard minimum these days with faster chips) otherwise you'll blow another power supply...