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Lightning damage to computer - how screwed am I?

Posted on 7/1/15 at 7:47 am
Posted by Unobtanium
Baton Rouge
Member since Nov 2009
1603 posts
Posted on 7/1/15 at 7:47 am
Lightning hit close by yesterday, zapped cable boxes, one TV and computer.

Computer won't turn on, no fans, nothing, but the "power" LED on the motherboard is blinking (steady ON normally). I'm hoping this is a sign that just my power supply is fried - is this a good assumption?

Help from the h/w guru's here much appreciated. I'm at work so no pic's for your troubles...
Posted by CubsFanBudMan
Member since Jul 2008
5107 posts
Posted on 7/1/15 at 8:50 am to
Not a h/w guru, but if the LED on the motherboard is blinking, it's probably not the power supply. Is it a steady blink, or a pattern (3 blinks pause 3 blinks etc)? If it's a pattern, you can probably find an error code for the motherboard.
Posted by junkfunky
Member since Jan 2011
33972 posts
Posted on 7/1/15 at 9:13 am to
See if the supply has a reset, I've seen some on the inside of older models.

One of our 6+ year old T7400's had almost the same thing happen with only the LED's appearing to work and nothing else. I pulled the plug from the power supply, hit the reset button and pushed the power button. Everything was working the way it should (blinking LED's on optical drive, fans blowing normally, etc.) and about 3-5 seconds after hitting the start button we had another surge. Never saw the post screen and the fans were constantly increasing in RPM. Knowing that I'll be replacing it soon I let it go for another 15 seconds until it sounded like it was about to turn violent. Waited 5 minutes, reset the power supply again and it started up with no problems.
Posted by WONTONGO
Member since Oct 2007
4297 posts
Posted on 7/1/15 at 11:17 am to
Sorry for your troubles.

I bought a UPS off craigslist for $50. One of the best investments I've ever made.
Posted by ATL-TIGER-732
ATL
Member since Jun 2013
2291 posts
Posted on 7/1/15 at 6:28 pm to
battery backup

Notice the free shipping!

Prices good thru Saturday - 7/4/2015

Everything I own that is electronic is on a UPS!
This post was edited on 7/1/15 at 6:30 pm
Posted by Unobtanium
Baton Rouge
Member since Nov 2009
1603 posts
Posted on 7/21/15 at 1:56 pm to
Bump for another problem...

Turns out the motherboard was fried (suspect network connection to UVerse router was the path), so I bought a new MB, CPU and memory. All peripherals still worked. Reinstalled Windows 7 (64 bit) since I'd already paid for it, everything is back to the way it was.

Now, when I try and perform a backup (using Windows backup program) I get an error that the hard drive I'm backing up to isn't formatted NTFS, even after a complete reformatting. Drive was/is good, and I could open all the files on it before the formatting.

Any ideas? I've heard Windows backup sucks but this is the first problem I've had with it.
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