Lightening Took Out My Modem And Computer

[Gazoo]

I am using my cell phone as a modem to access the Internet, so I have limited connectivity. Last night we had a lot of lightening, and I think it knocked out my modem. TWC says there are no outages. Right after the storm, I went to turn my computer on and it is dead. I hope it's just the power supply. I do have a very good UPS hooked up to everything. But we all know lightening will go where it decides to no matter what. I am going to town tomorrow to pick up a modem. The earliest the tech can get out here is Thursday. So if it isn't the modem, I can return it, but I will have to wait until Thurs. for the tech to diagnose the problem. I HATE it when this happens. I just put a new power supply in the computer last Oct...lol.

 

[kingzilla]

Reminds me of a few years ago when that happened to me! We were away on vacation and there was a severe lighting storm. A few days later when we came back, the computer won't turn on. As we would later learn, everysingle circuit in it was fried! Fortunatly it was still under a replacment plan we bought for it. We ended up changing everthing, sound card, video card, and finally motherboard to get it too work agian. The worst thing was that we had a surge control power bar and everthing!

 

[Things]

those power surge boards are useless, if lightning just travelled 100's of km through the air, so what's a 30cm power board going to protect?

 

[Gazoo]

Yeah, it stinks when this happens knowing we are doing everything to prevent it. I just hope it is only the power supply. I have an exact duplicate motherboard I ordered with the other power supply last Oct. Then I wasn't sure if it was the power supply, motherboard or both. I dread having to even replace the motherboard, much less everything else. The power supply is fairly easy.

 

[Gazoo]

those power surge boards are useless, if lightning just travelled 100's of km through the air, so what's a 30cm power board going to protect?

I agree but they are better than nothing when they work. But I have an Opti-UPS connected to my system. I am thinking lightening might have come in through the cable line, I need to get protection for it. I am not even sure it is properly grounded, but will make sue it is when the tech comes out Thurs. However, like I said, lightening will go where it wants to, no matter what we do. The only option for full protection is to unplug everything during a storm.

 

[pseudonomen137]

those power surge boards are useless, if lightning just travelled 100's of km through the air, so what's a 30cm power board going to protect?

That's not really how it works, but I'm too lazy to go into a full explanation . Some supplies like ones with internal batteries though can completely separate the input from the output with an intermediary like the battery (input AC to DC to charge the batt, then an inverter to route power from the batt to your devices) and that provides pretty strong protection.

I remember last year though when lighting took out some of my motherboards and the router but I wasn't the one who had it bad. The strike also took out a few of my neighbors things including the sprinkler system. That might not sound bad at first, but when you consider that everything that was killed was buried through underground cabling... not fun stuff!

Good luck fixing everything Gazoo!

 

[Gazoo]

Thanks pseudo I just ordered a PS and it will be here Tues. Gotta love Newegg.

 

[Greenie]

Yes a surge protector is mostly useless. Yesterday during the storm I unplugged everything from my PC. I.E. Power cable, Speakers, and routers. Also disconnected my modem. This is a good policy considering how far lightning can travel through air. Also EMP that comes with a close or direct strike can mess up a few things in a PC. My case came with a honeycomb liner that protects from EMP. So I am ok. For the most part. Have been lucky to get no direct strikes on house. As of yet anyways.

 

[Gazoo]

Well at least I am back online via broadband. I went to Best Buy and purchased a new modem. So that is one problem solved. BUT, it appears as though my wireless router is damaged. I have two wireless computers and they can see each other, but the router is not connecting to the Internet through the modem. So it looks like lightening came in through the cable, took out the modem, took out the ethernet part of the wireless router, then proceeded to take out my computer through the lan cable that was connected to the router. This means if the lightening took that route, then my motherboard is fried. I will know tomorrow after I get the power supply.

 

[Gazoo]

No surprise but it's the motherboard...lol. I will be putting in a new one this evening then I will be able to see the extent of the damage. I am still going to use the new power supply. I can always test out the old one later.

 

[Gazoo]

Last update...lol. The extent of the damage was limited to the motherboard...I know I am very lucky. So far as I can tell, everything else survived and I did not lose and data from the hard drives. So I am a happy camper

 

[Greenie]

Glad to hear you lost no data. Anyways I would just use it as an excuse to upgrade

 

[Gazoo]

Well if I had the money I would upgrade..lol. The only thing I did find was my floppy not working. No big deal considering it could have been much worse, and I do have a USB floppy I can use for flashing the bios. Speaking of that, I decided to flash the bios with the latest and greatest. After that everything started acting strange. So I decided to clear the raid and start over. It has been awhile. But the operating system wouldn't install. So I flashed to a previous bios and had the same trouble. Finally I ran memtest and was getting all kinds of memory errors. What it all boiled down to was I had to manually set the memory timings in the bios. This has been a real headache...lol. I am going to do everything I can to avoid it in the future.

 

[Things]

holy s@#$ , a huge lightning bolt just struck a tree 8 meters away from my house!!! the strange thing was that there was no signs that there was a storm even there?, no rain, no wind, no other thunder. IT JUST HAPPENED!! the first thing i thought was that someone was taking a photo of me, but then heard the thunder. the bad thing was, i had my home theatre system plugged in and the system was playing music, projector, amplifier, subwoofer, cd player were all plugged in, but when the lightning striked, the room went silent, i thought "oh crap my home theatre" everything is ok though. after that big strike, there were 3 other little ones, then the storm was gone, very strange???

 

[Gazoo]

holy s@#$ , a huge lightning bolt just struck a tree 8 meters away from my house!!! the strange thing was that there was no signs that there was a storm even there?, no rain, no wind, no other thunder. IT JUST HAPPENED!! the first thing i thought was that someone was taking a photo of me, but then heard the thunder. the bad thing was, i had my home theatre system plugged in and the system was playing music, projector, amplifier, subwoofer, cd player were all plugged in, but when the lightning striked, the room went silent, i thought "oh crap my home theatre" everything is ok though. after that big strike, there were 3 other little ones, then the storm was gone, very strange???

Well I am glad you and your HT are ok. I have a UPS dedicated to my projector. If the power goes out it will run it long enough for the fans to cool the projector before the projector shuts down. But one time the power went out and the UPS didn't work. Fortunately there was no damage to the projector and I ended up replacing that UPS.

Lightening has been known to strike on a perfectly clear day. There can be lightening in snow storms. I saw it during a snow storm one time. It was really weird, thunder and all that while it was snowing.

 

[Things]

yeah, i found out it was positive lightning and the actual storm was 10km away!!! i was more worried about the lightning frying all of the equipment, the system was turned on at the wall, but it wasn't actually operating except for the cd player, amplifier and my subwoofer. the subwoofer was the most expensive thing operating when the lightning struck. for some strange reason, i think the music stopped when the lightning hit, but when we ran in to check that everything was allright, it was still going?? maybe i was momentarily deaf, as i said, the lightning was about 8 meters away and is 6-10 times more powerful than regular lightning.