Hi: I found your form surfing the web. There is a lot of information here. I have a problem hope to gain from the experience many of you have. My daughter has a Dell C600 laptop. Her power cord melted into the socket in the computer. I took it to a repair guy and he cut the socket off and tried to get the rest out with a pair of neddle nose pliers. The result was not successful. He then informed me that if he had to take the machine apart, it would cost more than the computer is worth. My questions are: could the melting of the power cord while the computer was on have hurt the computer. I would hate to pay for such a replacement of that socket to have a dead computer. The second question is: how much should one pay for such a repair? Thanks in advance for your time and advice.