Help with MEAN mega....

Okay so I believe my new Adruino MEGA 1280 is defective due to the fact that when I pluged the untouched thing into my (ALSO New, ALSO Now Defective,) $2000.00 (USD) Laptop the MEAN Arduino caused a popup to apear. As I started to read it, I quickly realised the arduino had just caused my laptop's "USB Driver Board" to surge.....
Then I smelled circuit smoke.... It was not the mega :cry: :cry:

so why am I writing on arduino fourms and not DELL?
My Dell is still inshured so all i have to do is go a bit with no USB ports...
my MEGA is what is now in need of a fix or possibbly replacement... can any one help me and/or give advice?

THANKS

Sounds like a short... but if your laptop was really $2K, it definitely should have had better protection... I would consider getting a refund, LOL. Was your mega plugged in to anything besides the USB jack?

I've done that on a much cheaper laptop. But the laptop had a resettable polyfuse (like the Arduino) protecting the USB port. I just turned it off, waited, turned it back on and all was well again.

Was there nothing else plugged into the Mega at the time?

no it was not