I think lightning got me! Need some advice.

jradminjradmin North Kackalaki
edited August 2005 in Hardware
Ok, I think lighting has seriously screwed up my system. Lastnight I had a major storm roll through. I shut down and left everything plugged into the surges. Well, the lighting was EXTREMELY bad so I went and unpluged the surges just a a bolt hits literally outside my window.

After the storm passed I went to turn my system back on...and the screen doesnt cut on. So i figure maybe the store has grounded the surge or something, so I unplug it, reset it, and plug it back in. Still no picture on the monitor.

So then I goto turn the comp off, and it wont cut off using the power button...I gotta hit the PSU switch. So then I dissconnect the monitor from the KVM and then directly attach it to the tower...still nothing. I reconnect it to the KVM and boot up my other machine to see if maybe its the monitor...but it comes up perfectly fine.

So then I power it down (still having to use the PSU switch BTW) and power it back up to watch what lights are doing what. Well, the HDD light comes on for about a min or 2 and the CDRW and DVD both power up. MOBO light comes on ofcourse and the CPU can works fine. 6800GT GPU fan comes on, and if I unplug it then I get the loud beep from the card.

Is this just a MOBO issue you think or is there a good chance everything is kaput?

Comments

  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited July 2005
    Have you checked the voltage from the wall with a multimeter? And unplug the surge suppressor if you haven't yet.

    Tex
  • EnverexEnverex Worcester, UK Icrontian
    edited July 2005
    EMP'd?
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited July 2005
    Unfortunately it probably would have been better if you had left the surges plugged in. A lightning strike is an electric discharge through air; the voltage rips the electrons off molecules in the air and all of a sudden you have conductive ionized gas. As such, the air behaves like a wire and current travels along that wire to the ground. Current traveling through a wire generates a magnetic field and any conductive objects near the wire will have a voltage induced across them. The voltage induced by lightning ordinarily would be dissipated to Earth ground, but your surge supressor was your computer's connection to ground and by unplugging it you electrically isolated your machine.

    Long story short, if lightning really struck right outside your window there's a good chance ESD killed random parts of your system, particularly if your case is made of plastic, is open, or has lots of fans holes (poor EM shielding).

    -drasnor :fold:
  • jradminjradmin North Kackalaki
    edited July 2005
    Tex wrote:
    Have you checked the voltage from the wall with a multimeter? And unplug the surge suppressor if you haven't yet.

    Tex

    I havent checked the voltage, but I have pluged the system into a different outlet with no successful power-ups there either. There is another system thats plugged into the same surge and its working without a hitch. I'm wondering if the lightning just blew through that plug. I'm going to pull everything out of the case when I get home and start turning it on with one piece at a time and see what happens. Any advice on where to start looking would be much appreciated :)
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited July 2005
    PSU then MB.

    I asked if you had checked the voltage because a few years back I lost a LOT of computers (I usually have 5 or 6 of my own and work on others also) due to a bad transmitter or something. The electric company said it was damaged by lightning probably. I had all kinds of probs. Failed PSU's. MB's etc.. Drove me crazy. (And I drove Fry's crazy returning brand new MB's that lasted a couple days)

    Lost a big screen TV and that afternoon my wife made toast in the toaster and when she hit the button on the toaster all the lights in our house dimmed.

    Plugged a multimeter into a wall socket and it was varying wildly between 70 and 140 volts. Like jumping Ching Ching Ching etc.... the meter never stopped rolling.

    I was like WTF? Called the Electric company and they fixed it. But didnt cover me on all the damage. They explained "thats what your home insurance is for son".

    Tex

    Lesson learned. Always check the wall socket voltage after a storm.
  • jradminjradmin North Kackalaki
    edited July 2005
    drasnor wrote:
    Unfortunately it probably would have been better if you had left the surges plugged in. A lightning strike is an electric discharge through air; the voltage rips the electrons off molecules in the air and all of a sudden you have conductive ionized gas. As such, the air behaves like a wire and current travels along that wire to the ground. Current traveling through a wire generates a magnetic field and any conductive objects near the wire will have a voltage induced across them. The voltage induced by lightning ordinarily would be dissipated to Earth ground, but your surge supressor was your computer's connection to ground and by unplugging it you electrically isolated your machine.

    Long story short, if lightning really struck right outside your window there's a good chance ESD killed random parts of your system, particularly if your case is made of plastic, is open, or has lots of fans holes (poor EM shielding).

    -drasnor :fold:

    Case is all metal except for the front panel. I didnt think about the ground issue, but then again I have an old HP pavillion plugged up to the same surge thats got a 90% plastic case...so you would think that one had more reason to fry yet it didnt.
  • jradminjradmin North Kackalaki
    edited July 2005
    Tex wrote:
    PSU then MB.

    I asked if you had checked the voltage because a few years back I lost a LOT of computers (I usually have 5 or 6 of my own and work on others also) due to a bad transmitter or something. The electric company said it was damaged by lightning probably. I had all kinds of probs. Failed PSU's. MB's etc.. Drove me crazy. (And I drove Fry's crazy returning brand new MB's that lasted a couple days)

    Lost a big screen TV and that afternoon my wife made toast in the toaster and when she hit the button on the toaster all the lights in our house dimmed.

    Plugged a multimeter into a wall socket and it was varying wildly between 70 and 140 volts. Like jumping Ching Ching Ching etc.... the meter never stopped rolling.

    I was like WTF? Called the Electric company and they fixed it. But didnt cover me on all the damage. They explained "thats what your home insurance is for son".

    Tex

    Lesson learned. Always check the wall socket voltage after a storm.

    Never thought about that before...but I've never lost anything to lightning before either so its some good info I'll need to check.
  • edcentricedcentric near Milwaukee, Wisconsin Icrontian
    edited July 2005
    Check each outlet on your surge, it could be an internal issue.
    Look at the PSU first. It could be just one of hte aux voltage lines that it lost.
    Did you disconect modem/network line also?
    If not then I bet that you fried the mobo.
  • jradminjradmin North Kackalaki
    edited July 2005
    edcentric wrote:
    Check each outlet on your surge, it could be an internal issue.
    Look at the PSU first. It could be just one of hte aux voltage lines that it lost.
    Did you disconect modem/network line also?
    If not then I bet that you fried the mobo.

    6800GT definately got fried as did the keyboard controller on the MOBO. Everything else seems to be ok though.
  • rykoryko new york
    edited July 2005
    that sucks...i just lost an APC UPS to a huge thunderstorm a few days ago. luckily it did its job and saved my system. my rig was stuck in the on position and i was forced to turn off the psu switch just like you. was totally freaked when i tried to turn it back on and there was nothing. calmed down and replaced the UPS with surge protector, and my system came back to life.

    good luck with getting your sytem back up and running. you should be able to rma.
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited July 2005
    Yup, UPS's are the cat's meow for lack of trouble here, where in summer we get DAILY lightning storms and some of the power poles (read most) have lightning protectors on the poles, grounded to earth.
  • jradminjradmin North Kackalaki
    edited August 2005
    Well, I ended up losing my 6800GT card, Audigy 2, 2 USB ports and the keyboard/mouse controller on the MOBO.

    Unfortunately the insurance company is telling me I have to use a tech other then myself to give an estimate and fix it. Oh well, guess this will take care of that computer I was wanting to build my GF :)
  • TheSmJTheSmJ
    edited August 2005
    jradmin wrote:
    Well, I ended up losing my 6800GT card, Audigy 2, 2 USB ports and the keyboard/mouse controller on the MOBO.

    Unfortunately the insurance company is telling me I have to use a tech other then myself to give an estimate and fix it. Oh well, guess this will take care of that computer I was wanting to build my GF :)


    Meh. Just have a friend call in for you (doesn't even have to be tech-savy), and have him tell them exactly what you said things cost.

    Or on the other hand, you could take it to a place like Best Buy, and have their "techs" give them the cost of a similar system they sell (which would cost much, much more than anything you could build yourself) and use the 2 grand you'd get to build the computer of your dreams.
  • edcentricedcentric near Milwaukee, Wisconsin Icrontian
    edited August 2005
    https://thunderstorm.vaisala.com/tux/jsp/explorer/explorer.jsp
    just for interest.

    I have never seen a sytem effected by EMP. A few kV usually does the job fine.
    If you are in the market for surge suppression you need to look at the response time and total energy that it will block. If the unit doesn't tell you those things than you don't want it.
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