PC Is Toast

[jay_merrill]

I have a HP 1644 PC that was "fried" by a lightening strike on my house. It was running through an APC 1500 UPS, which did absolutely nothing to protect it, because my house was not grounded at the time. I have grounded outlets and a grounding rod next to the breaker box, but the copper wire connected to it had apparently been knocked loose by a lawnmower.

The power supply was obviously toast (burnt smell, no output) and the new one kept tripping the breaker when I installed it. I'm pretty sure that the motherboard is gone too, but I'm not sure what else is.

Before I launch on a mission to replace stuff in my computer, I'm curious to know if anyone else has been through this. If so, what was your experience as to how much of the puter was salvageable? I've found a source for the MB at only about $70 and the new power supply was only about $45, so life wouldn't be too terrible, if those were the only things that I have to replace.

The computer also has a Lightscribe CD/DVD/burner, a PNY Verto duel head (DVI) video card, network interface card and Seagate 500 gig HD. The processor is a Pentium D (dual core) and there is 2 gig of memory in it. The HD did survive the hit and I was able to recover everything on it, by putting it in a Rocketfish external drive bay.

Anyone have any thoughts on how much of this stuff is likely to be toast too? Any and all input will be appreciated.


PS: I also had a Western Digital 500 gig "Mybook" connected to the computer as a backup, via a USB cable. Lesson learned - disconnect your backup from the puter and pull the power cord too. Mine was fried and I only lucked out in having an internal HD that was intact.

Another interesting part of the experience, is that I had the monitors running through an Acoustic Research power strip that I bought in the home entertainment section at Best Buy. Its a very cool power strip with a very high surge rating of 5,100 joules. Nothing that was plugged into it suffered any ill effects.

 

[ThumbPkr]

Re: PC Is Toast

I took on a data recovery job on a pc that suffered a lightening strike and every drive was fried and nothing in the pc was reuseable.The person also lost appliances as a result of the lightening strike.
The two harddrives had extensive geneaology data on them and as you might expect it was the controller cards on the drives that suffered the damage.
My solution was to buy the exact same drive on the bay and swap controller cards to the damaged drive which enabled them to spin up and give me access to their data.
I must say that if this solution is used you should take the time to insure that you get the exact same firmware Rev of the controller board that is on the damaged drive as a different revision may or may not work for you and worse case could overwrite any data that you are looking to recover.
This is not a short term project as you might imagine but is satisfying non the less considering the years of work that can be recovered.Ron G

 

[jay_merrill]

Re: PC Is Toast

I'm OK on the data - the internal HD was not cooked. I have noticed one or two corrupted files, but nothing serious. The main problem that I had is that the PC that I am writing on now is older, with IDE drives. The one that was damaged has a SATA drive, so I couldn't pop it into the older puter.

I've actually been fooling with this for quite some time and only found the Rocketfish external drive bay recently. It turned out to be a lifesaver and all I had to do is to install the internal HD in it, hook it up via USB, and recover the data. I did return it, however, because it runs hot and I don't trust it for long term use. Actually, I think it is intended for backup purposes only and is supposed to be turned off after each use.

I now have a pair of Seagate FreeAgent external drives - one as a primary storage device and one for backup. I am no longer going to use an internal drive for storage for a couple of reasons, the most important of which, is that I live in hurricane country and packing up a couple of external drives, is faster and easier than bringing the whole computer. I can grab the drives and my laptop and go, relying on insurance to replace my other hardware, should we get another Katrina.

One of the things that I do wonder about this situation, is if there are folks who will actually test peripheral devices. If I could take them to someone and get a definitive answer on their condition, I would pay a reasonable fee to do so.

BTW, I had other items destroyed too. I did have high quality power strips on my other electronics, but I lost a few other items, such as power tool battery chargers.

 

[Tim Frank]

Re: PC Is Toast

Jay,
Not particularly helpful, but my experience is that if it is fried it's fried, if it's not, it's not.
I've lost stuff that I would have bet the farm would have been fine....I had a satellite receiver that was unplugged from AC power, and disconnected from the dish....a very near lightning miss took it out....no idea how. May have been a complete coincidennce but it worked fine before the storm....dead afterwards.
So IMO, you will just have to go one step at a time and see what you end up with.....which is doubtless what you are going to do anyway....

But....I noted you said that the new power supply was blowing the breaker. Did you find a cause that solved the problem when fixed? You may have some issues in your home AC supply system if you were running without a ground.

You might consider getting your wiring checked just in case.....
Did you lose any motors or appliances?

 

[Capt Ron]

Re: PC Is Toast

Sorry to hear that the majic smoke escaped from your systems, I too recently experienced a similar problem, only different.

I have a tower out in my shop that runs my cnc router and during a TS I unplugged the entire system and came inside. The next morning I plugged it back in and it emitted a loud pop and a puff of majic smoke. A surface mount component had blown off the mother board and the power supply was cooked. The only thing that I removed was the hard drive to keep my files. I bought another tower off Craigs List the next day and put the HD in it. The cnc driver board wasn't effected and I haven't checked the ram.

There were no connections between this computer and the outside world plus it's sitting on a wooden bench in a wooden shop. The shop get's it's power through the house breaker box and no other computers or other electronics took any kind of hit.

Capt Ron

 

[jay_merrill]

Re: PC Is Toast

Jay,
But....I noted you said that the new power supply was blowing the breaker. Did you find a cause that solved the problem when fixed? You may have some issues in your home AC supply system if you were running without a ground.

Its not the breaker in the box that is blowing, its the breaker on the power supply. Something in the computer is shorting.

 

[gonefishie]

Re: PC Is Toast

Does the p.s trips the breaker by itself or only when you have it connected to the p.c? By itself, problem with whatever it's plugged into or the new p.s itself. If only when connected then you can connect one peripheral device at a time to see which one cause the problem. M.B first then fan, hard drive, disk drive and so on.

 

[jay_merrill]

Re: PC Is Toast

Trips when plugged into the puter.

 

[ThumbPkr]

Re: PC Is Toast

No doubt the mb is shorted,if you can see any electrolytic capacitors swollen or leaking and you have the time and inclination you might replace them and you may find your problem but considering the jolt that board took I would not waste my time with it.
If your board has the CPU 4 pin connector (2Y2B) and the power supply does not trip with that disconnected then you may get by with a new processor but I would be wary of spending any money on that mb at this point.Ron G

 

[CaptainKev]

Re: PC Is Toast

Sorry to hear about your P.C. Does anybody have an answer to the issue of the UPS not protecting your system? Did you have APC's Power Chute software installed? IMHO, in any event, It would seem to me that if the ground was bad, it should have warned you. Regarding surge protectors, I'm also not sure that all strikes come in on the hot wires. The neutral/ground being tied together in the service panel rely on the "line of least resistance" theory........that's a great theory, but nobody knows how much energy a strike is going to have so providing that "line of least resistance" is a guess, at best. The last major hit I had (to the tune of $8,000) came through the neutral/ground. and fried everything from the back door. My APC 1500 (and software) didn't see that coming, either.
Kev.

 

[henrye718]

Re: PC Is Toast

If you can get shocked from the plumbing in your bathroom from a strike, it is back flowing pretty good even when grounded. I could imagine with no ground at all how bad it would be.

You could go to a computer repair shop, they should have a old outdated MB to test your components on. Do tell them these parts have a good chance of ruining their mobo so there are no misunderstandings.

I don't know if you realize or not but if you buy a different motherboard than you had before your old HD is just going to boot to a windows error blue screen. Incase you were wanting to recover whatever was on it before.

 

[jay_merrill]

Re: PC Is Toast

I wouldn't bother trying to have the MB repaired - a new one is only about $70.

As far as the "blue screen of death," is concerned, would I get that because of something on the bios? If I remember correctly, the package did not originally come with XP pro and I had CompUSA install it, so I'm not sure that I had a Microsoft/HP version of windows. That being the case, would I get a blue screen?

BTW, the motherboard for the computer is available from the original manufacturer, speced as an HP component. Would that make any difference concerning blue screen issues?

What I am getting at here, is that I am wondering if the blue screen issue is because the operating system expects to read some code on the bios, indicating that it is an HP computer. I'm not sure that will happen anyway, because I think I have a generic version of XP Pro and even if its not, I can get an HP speced MB.

 

[j_martin]

Re: PC Is Toast

I am pretty well versed in ESD protection. I'll try to help you understand how it works.
A lightning strike is often millions of volts, and tens of thousands of amperes, and it occurrs in a few millionths of a second. A good ground might be 0.1 ohms, so a stroke of 50,000 amps would develop 5000 volts to ground.

The way a good ESD protector works is that in the first few nanoseconds of the strike, it clamps all the conductors protected, (neutral, power, and ground) together, so they all jump together, maybe to 5000 volts and back in a microsecond or so. Then it lets go. Everything is at the same voltage, so no current flows and no damage is done.

here's where the rub is. If you have the PC on one protector, and the telephone line is not protected, then there's 5000 volts difference between everything in the computer and the phone line. Because of the timing dynamics, if the computer and the phone line are on separate protectors, there will likely be a large voltage difference for at least part of the strike.

The principle is, everything that is connected together has to be protected by the same device. If it's a telephone switching system with 150 circuits, all the circuits have to be protected by the same device with a common ground buss.

When properly installed, a good surge protector is very effective. I've personally seen where a direct strike on a telephone line, which literally burned the telephone wiring throughout the building, was blocked by a Panamax protector which itself was destroyed, and found laying in the middle of the room smoking. The fax machine it protected was untouched.

hope it helps
John

 

[henrye718]

Re: PC Is Toast

I wouldn't bother trying to have the MB repaired - a new one is only about $70.

As far as the "blue screen of death," is concerned, would I get that because of something on the bios? If I remember correctly, the package did not originally come with XP pro and I had CompUSA install it, so I'm not sure that I had a Microsoft/HP version of windows. That being the case, would I get a blue screen?

BTW, the motherboard for the computer is available from the original manufacturer, speced as an HP component. Would that make any difference concerning blue screen issues?

What I am getting at here, is that I am wondering if the blue screen issue is because the operating system expects to read some code on the bios, indicating that it is an HP computer. I'm not sure that will happen anyway, because I think I have a generic version of XP Pro and even if its not, I can get an HP speced MB.

The BSOD would come from the new motherboard having a different chipset, hard drive controller and various other different devices. If you absolutly must get back whats on your old PC's hard drive. Maybe go to ebay and look for the same exact pc or motherboard to load your HD with is the easiest way. You can also load a second copy of windows onto that drive, WITHOUT formatting during the install and your directories or folders should be intact. You then can get back all pictures and files etc. then but installed programs will be tied to the old windows install and will not run.

 

[gonefishie]

Re: PC Is Toast

If you get a MB/CPU combo then you wouldn't have to worry about the chipset problem. MB only, just make sure it supports your CPU, hard drive type (IDE/SATA etc..) RAM type and size, graphic card and whatever tied to the old MB. You would have to go into the BIOS on initial boot up to set the boot order, memory size, assign drive letter and order, etc.. then you should be fine.

 

[dolluper]

Re: PC Is Toast

You can recover data from a non working HD with the use of Knoppix which is a live free cd but you need a cd-dvd writer and a cd player to run knoppix installed on a computer you stick the dead hd in....it will mount the dead one and copy all the files....the need for dvd writer if you have lots of files
you can get the destructions below at this link
http://www.shockfamily.net/cedric/knoppix/

 

[jay_merrill]

Re: PC Is Toast

While I appreciate the good intentions, I have the data! The question is whether or not I can revive the puter.

The internal HD survived the hit, even though the external didn't. I bought an external HD bay called a "Rocketfish." Its a very nifty device that allows you to install a SATA drive in about five minutes - just open it up, install mounting rails on the drive, slip it into the box and onto the built in data/power connectors, close it, plug in to a another computer via USB2, and you're good to go.

The biggest problem that I had, was that I had to go back to the PC that I am on now, which is older and has IDE drives. It is not SATA capable. so just putting the drive into it was not an option. Hooking SATA drives up externally, via USB does work, though.

The reason why I am trying to resurrect the HP, is because it was purchased as an editing computer for photography. I often work with "RAW" image files (as opposed to jpegs), shot with 12MP digital cameras, so the files can be quite large. I also tend to load multiple photo editing programs at the same time, so that I can take advantage of the strengths of each one. While I can do everything that I need to on the puter that I am now using, having the additional "horsepower" that the destroyed unit provided, would make things easier and faster.

At this point, I think that I may just use the box to build up my own system. Even though I would like to return this puter to its former duties as a multimedia system server, I can "hang with it" for awhile. That will allow me to buy stuff for the build up as I feel like it. Just think, now I can have internal arguments with myself about whether I spend some excess cash on boat stuff or puter stuff!

Next on my list, will be to see if I can find someone to test my processor, memory sticks, video card and Lightscribe. If those items work, building the rest of the computer shouldn't be too expensive.

 

[JaSla74]

Re: PC Is Toast

You can buy an adapter for SATA to IDE if need be. I picked up a few back in the day before CompUSA went under, although I'm sure you could find them cheaper online. I also wouldn't worry too much about your drive running hot. All of the drives that I've worked with have run hot. No one really notices because they're enclosed in their machine, but if you where pull your case open while they're running you notice quite a bit of heat coming off of them.

As far as backing up data is concerned I'm a bit paranoid (mainly my pics). I run two drives in my machine, an external, & multiple DVDR back ups, with a few copies being in my in-laws safe. I also use Window's skydrive. It's only 25gigs, but it's free. I back a lot of pics up there, so even if I were to somehow lose all my drives I could still pull my pics from any machine with a connection.

 

[dolluper]

Re: PC Is Toast

Me thinks you fired your video card....the reason for the blue screen .....try a cheapy card just to see if the system will boot.....the bios should do a check before it boots to op system ...do you get any beeps before it shuts down

 

[SuzukiChopper]

Re: PC Is Toast

Jay, it's easy to test the stuff in the computer. First remove everything (vid card, dvd/cd drives) including the RAM sticks. Leave the CPU and fan. Plug in the power supply and turn it on. If the PSU didn't trip, add one stick of RAM. Repeat until you hook something up that makes the PSU trip. My guess is that it's going to be the video card or a DVD/CD rom that is shot.

Just go one piece at a time. If the PSU trips with just the MB and CPU... then you'll be replacing that and then may find out you STILL have other stuff to replace. Good luck.