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Lightening Hit

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by davis2c2

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I was given a month old computer by a friend whose house was struck by lightening, it burned up the TV and the phones etc.

I replaced the Motherboard and the CPU but it still will not boot up, I even replaced the power supply with an old one and tried a different hard drive.

DOES ANYONE HAVE ANY IDEA ON HOW TO BREATH LIFE INTO THIS THING? All replies appreciated.

5 replies

by larryd4

Sometimes with a lightning strike metal can be magnetized as well as altered to not allow a current to pass. The metal in the box is part of your grounding system. Pull the board/CPU and power out and test it out of the box. Just make sure all is grounded out so you don't ruin the new stuff.

by davis2c2

Nothing is wacky at this point, thank you for your thoughts, I will try them and let you know. Thanks again.

by thechas

Lightning can be very destructive.

One problem with repairing equipment that has been in the path of a lightning strike is that all of the damage may not show up right away.

As far as how to repair this computer, I myself would advice tossing the whole thing and starting over.

I would try installing the hard drive in a USB drive case and see if I can even access the drive and files. If you can access the drive, back it up right away.

You did not provide details of the system or motherboard.

Is there a NIC card or a modem?
Both are likely trash.

What about any other drives?

Heck, the keyboard and mouse could be bad too.

Or, it could be as simple as the front panel switches are burnt.

Chas

by mjd420nova

I worked on a users unit that was giving me the same faults and found that one of the nylon standoffs for the mother board had been carbonized and thus shorting things out. Remove the MOBO and check all the standoffs and maybe just replace them to eliminate this as a possible fault. All plugin cards have to be suspect at this point, strip the unit down to only the barest needs and substitute a known good video card to start and work upward from there.

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