This was not what I had planned for the long holiday weekend. However, there's nothing I can do eh? 

I've got a UPS unit that powers my TV, Media Center, Stereo, and Satellite receivers. I wanted to protect my devices from a surge in power or from a short flicker in power that might knock them out.  Who wouldn't want that? Once every couple of months the circuit on the UPS would trip.  I would have to hit the reset button and then everything would be fine.  I figured that this was due to a high load behind put on the UPS.  And I had plans to replace it with something larger. On Sunday morning the UPS tripped and pushing the reset button didn't help.  I figured that the overload caused the UPS to call it quits. I got a second UPS and plugged that in.  When I turned it on, sparks and smoke started to come out the back of my Media Center. Instantly I knew this wasn't a good sign.  It wasn't the UPS that was causing my problems all this time.  It was the power supply on my MCE that tripped the UPS.

You can see the damage done in this picture.  The big black mark on the right is on the thick sheet of plastic that I peeled back after taking the power supply apart. It's meant to protect the circuits from the outer metal case of the power supply. The damage area is small, but it doesn't take much.

Unfortunately the power supply in my MCE isn't a standard power supply.  It's a rectangular shape and it's pretty small compared to the standard power supply's.  I was to patch the system with an ATX power supply out of another computer, but it's hanging out the back of my MCE.  So it's not really a good solution.  It looks like I'll need to replace the case - and maybe even the motherboard.

I guess I can't really complain.  The computer has been running 24/7 for over 3 years. There was never any real problems with the hardware or software. I guess this is my indication to build a new Vista MCE. I've been holding off on that because I didn't want any downtime with the current system.