Sennadar Forums

On my phone.

I think that lightning strike earlier today I went on about on Twitter killed my desktop.

Turn it on, hear the fans, but no video. I can't tell if it's just no video or not even booting.

I don't have another monitor to plug up to it, and the monitor's boot screen comes on, so I don't think it's the monitor.

Is there any way to make it make a sound so I can see if the MB is good? If I can determine if it's the video card, MB, or the monitor, it would at least be making progress.

This is a surprise to me, the desktop and monitor are on a surge protector. It should have,.well, protected them.

Needless to say, there won't be any chapter posts til I get this fixed. The writing laptop has no wifi, so I have no way to post them online.

Surge protectors can only do so much, a lightning strike can take them out. If you have a DVM you can check the voltage coming from your surge protector. If you have an old PC speaker you might be able to connect it your motherboard and see if you can hear any post beeps.

I have a voltmeter, but I've plugged the desktop up directly to the outlet, bypassing it, and still nothing.

When I turn on the desktop, the PS runs, and I hear the wafer HDD click once, then nothing. Just the PS and video card fans running, no video, no audio. I tried logging in as if the box booted normally, but I can't tell if it did anything. Trying to "guess" where the icons would be on the desktop don't produce any indications that the box booted up.

I was hoping to get.a click on something that would start up and play a sound, to tell me if the OS was running.

It sounds like one the voltages the PSU creates may be missing. You can check the DC voltage rails on the 24 pin connector. The fans generally run on 12 volts only. A new PSU may be in your future.

Also you may want to consider obtaining an usb wifi adapter, most are not very expensive.

When you say video card, do you mean a separate card you installed made by NVidia or Radeon? or do you mean a built in chipset on the motherboard? The reason I'm asking is if you mean a separate card, and depending on the age of the desktop, it could be like mine that has a built in video chipset that outputs video to a monitor. If looking at the back of the computer you see a second place you can plug your monitor into try that and reboot in safe mode which should bypass a third party video card.

An update.

At Best Buy right now, it was the ONLY place I could take the box to get looked at. Every independent computer repair shop in the city closed down.

COVID victims I suppose.

Anyway, the box came right up for them. No problems. I tested the monitor using my Roku and no problems. We're all baffled.

I took the opportunity (and to avoid the $100 diagnostic fee) to have them install a 1TB SSD in the desktop. Waiting for them to finish it now.

The only thing I can think of is the lightning strike fried the surge protector, so I bought a hardcore one.

On the laptop front, I may have found my horse. Samsung Galaxy Book Flex 2, i7, 512GB SSD, 16GB RAM, for $850.

It looks like a good system for the money.

Nice save! Glad it wasn't dead, and an SSD upgrade from spinning rust is always good

That laptop looks a reasonable spec and something which should last a long time, especially since you don't run anything heavy on it.

I was surprised about the price it comes in at as well -- my last laptop purchase was to replace a desktop as main gaming machine, so I sort of forgot normal midrange workhorse laptops exist.

at least the surge protector did its job
i would suggest getting an UPS (uninterrupable Power source), its just backup battery
to protect you electronics.
it will save you from brownouts as well as surges.

Well, I have it home and back in place, and it's not 100% meys and oye juice.

The HDMI port is toast, but thankfully my monitor is new enough to have a display port, so I've switched to a display port cable.

The surge protector I'd had my computer and monitor plugged into before is nuked. It sacrificed itself defending the system from the surge, and I will give it full military honors tomorrow before work before I throw it away. I have a new surge protector now, and a pretty freakin' hardcore one that cost me a LOT of money. But it was worth it if it saves me from another day like today.

But, the big thing is that the ethernet on the desktop is fried. Gone. Kaput.

And that's how the box got fried even though it was off and behind a surge protector. The spike from the lightning came in through the cable modem and into the box through the ethernet cable. That I didn't have running through a surge protector...and now I've paid for my lack of foresight.

The saving grace in that bad news is that the desktop has built-in wifi which I have never used...UNTIL NOW. And IT WORKS.

I've never used it because I'm old school enough to believe that an ethernet hardline is faster than wifi, even though my ethernet is--er WAS--Gigabit and my wifi runs at 5GHz...so they're most likely almost equivalent when it comes to transfer speed.

The next time I download a couple of gigabytes worth of game patch data, I'll find out if the wifi is just as fast. But for gaming and general fooling around, I suppose the wifi is more than fine.

So, I'm currently typing this from my desktop. I've got the new SSD set up, all my games moved over and working, and I'm out about $400 between tech fees and replacement parts. But it could have been worse. MUCH MUCH WORSE. And for that, I truly am counting my blessings.

And as an aside, I'll be buying my new writing laptop next week. The day's considerable expenses has put me to where I can't afford it now, so I have to wait until after payday to have the money to buy it.

Oh joy, did I ever celebrate too soon.

I JUST found out that the lightning strike may have killed my washer.

If it did, I'm screwed.

Yep, I'm screwed. The washer is dead.

There goes my writing laptop. Washers aren't cheap. Even the most generic barebones models cost upwards of $600. And that's my laptop budget.

Excuse me while I go assemble a guillotine.

I'll have to find some way to fix the EEE before it eats the new fan, or just pray that it doesn't eat the fan. It's my only option.

Now I get to hand-wash my clothes in the bathtub. That's gonna take all night.

Guess it's a good thing I'm working overnight 12 hour shifts for the next 6 days. Staying up all night will help reset my sleep schedule.

God, am I ever reaching to find a silver lining in all this.

I take it no house contents insurance? Is that even a thing where you live?

Sorry to hear you've had such a bad couple of days