Lightening and computers

[cirks]

During the storms last week, we had numerous problems caused by a lightening strike/discharge - ie DVD player, Aerial booster, Wireless Router all have broken! However, the biggest pain at the moment is that the computer did as well. It now refuses to boot (it does power up). I've had the hard disk out and tested it in a friend's machine and, apart from the bios not recognising the specific spec of the disk, it does spin up and start to load the OS (Win2KPro). Therefore, this leads me to believe it is probably the motherboard that has been 'electrocuted'!
What is the next step? Is the easiest thing to do to pick up a cheap M/B to replace the broken one? If I do, how do I ensure that it will work straight off with the existing hard-disk and config etc?

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

[BliarOut]

2K is pretty good at recognising new hardware. My MoBo died and I put my disks and controller in a new box and off it went. About three restarts later to load all the new drivers and it was just like my old machine, only much faster

[greenlandy]

Rob's right if you've got 2k or xp you can normally plug the hard drive into new hardware and away she'll go.

[cirks]

so, just to ensure I'm understanding correctly, if I replace the m/b (assuming that this is the actual problem!) then the new m/b will be ok with all the ram, pci cards and the drives etc? Isn't it partly down to the bios whether things boot correctly (hence the machine I swapped the drive to for testing not actually managing to boot fully)?
i.e rather than swapping things to another box, I need to keep the existing box and only replace the m/b. Sorry if I'm being a bit dense here, after all, it is a Monday

[_dobbo_]

Might be worth investing in one of these

A fiver spent to save yourself a lot of hassle in future!

[FunkyNige]

cirks said:

so, just to ensure I'm understanding correctly, if I replace the m/b (assuming that this is the actual problem!) then the new m/b will be ok with all the ram, pci cards and the drives etc?

Unless your RAM is very old it should work fine.

cirks said:

Isn't it partly down to the bios whether things boot correctly (hence the machine I swapped the drive to for testing not actually managing to boot fully)?

All the BIOS stuff is done automatically now, XP will moan if you change the config though which is probably why it didn't boot when you put the hard drive is another machine.

cirks said:

i.e rather than swapping things to another box, I need to keep the existing box and only replace the m/b. Sorry if I'm being a bit dense here, after all, it is a Monday

The box doesn't matter, but it could be the power supply that's buggered instead of the m/b. Even with a duff power supply (PSU) the machine can start to boot up.

[cirks]

_dobbo_ said:

Might be worth investing in one of these A fiver spent to save yourself a lot of hassle in future!

I've got all the electronic stuff plugged into surge protectors already and they didn't seem to prevent the problems. With the exception of the arial booster, all the bits that were 'killed' by the lightening were supposedly protected. Bit worrying really that the damage could still be caused.

[cirks]

Thanks FunkyNige.

FunkyNige said:

The box doesn't matter, but it could be the power supply that's buggered instead of the m/b. Even with a duff power supply (PSU) the machine can start to boot up.

Is there something obvious on the PSU that would fail or stop it booting properly? I've used a multimeter and there is 5V (ish) getting to the drives and various parts of the MB. The PSU was, to be honest, my first thought as to what had been damaged but with the the drives spinning up and the voltage tests I did seeming to suggest that it was ok that's why I assumed it must be the M/b.

[NAPiston]

If the lightning strike is close enough or powerful enough, nothing is going to save your equipment. Even the best surge suppressors are only rated to handle a certain amount of energy. That’s why you can buy models that come with damage insurance to cover those rare situations where you basically get a direct hit on your house and it overpowers the safeguards. Check yours, and if you have such a policy follow though with it.

If you have a phone line or network line plugged into your computer that is not going through a surge suppressor the lightning strike can also enter your computer through those avenues and fry your system or parts of it. Its not uncommon to see fried modems after a lighting strike but not have damage to other parts of the system.

As to how to troubleshoot your system:

power supply voltages: You need to check all of the voltages and they all need to be accurate, i.e. 3.3 volts, 5 volts, 12 volts, etc. They shouldn't be 2.5 or 4 volts for the 3.3 volt line, but 3.2 might be ok. (Or whatever your supply is supposed to be putting out.)

If that's not the problem, are there any other cards/devices plugged into your motherboard? Unplug Everything but the cpu, fans, video and one stick of ram to see if something else was fried and is keeping the system from booting up. Pull any modems, network cards/cables, sound cards, firewire cards, hard drives, cds, dvds, floppy, anything plugged into the usb ports, etc. Try having it boot with just the motherboard, cpu, one ram chip and video and see if it boots up far enough to give you an error message about no boot device. If you have more than one stick of ram you could try with different sticks, one at a time. Try to get to the most minimal hardware configuration possible where you can get any life from it and then add your components back in one at a time. If this is a modern system most everything else may be built into the motherboard and there may not be much to remove but its worth a check.

Also, you said it started to boot up but didn’t finish? How far did it get? Any error messages? What was the last thing on the screen?

Good Luck!

[ATG]

That's bad luck. Particularly irritating when you think you've got some protection.

Think/hope i had a narrow escape today. Woke up at 4 this morning to a big electrical storm. Seem to have unhooked the PC in time (haven't checked the NIC yet). Am hoping the TV took the full brunt as it is a POS and the landlord could do with replacing it.

[FunkyNige]

cirks said:

Thanks FunkyNige. FunkyNige said: The box doesn't matter, but it could be the power supply that's buggered instead of the m/b. Even with a duff power supply (PSU) the machine can start to boot up. Is there something obvious on the PSU that would fail or stop it booting properly? I've used a multimeter and there is 5V (ish) getting to the drives and various parts of the MB. The PSU was, to be honest, my first thought as to what had been damaged but with the the drives spinning up and the voltage tests I did seeming to suggest that it was ok that's why I assumed it must be the M/b.

I don't think a multimeter will update quick enough to test a computer PSU, the easiest way to check it is to find one that you know works (e.g from a friend's computer) and stick that in. There is software to check how well they're running but I guess that's not much help when you can't boot up!

[cirks]

NAPiston said:

Also, you said it started to boot up but didn’t finish? How far did it get? Any error messages? What was the last thing on the screen?

It only actually powers up. Doesn't get to displaying anything on screen - so, either not even getting to bios checks or the display adaptors fried! Based on the lack of disk read/write activity (judged by lack of sound) I'm guessing it is the MB.

Thanks for all the suggestions as to what to try. I'll see what the insurance guys say but just to get things up and running again, for sake of a few quid if I can resolve it myself that much the better. I can leave the insurance to sort out the DVD, Video, Router etc etc.