Member Avatar for Bman5

The other day it was storming out with lots of lightning, so I decided to turn off my computer. First let me say that the side panel on the tower was removed because earlier in the day I was dust cleaning and just hadn't put it back on. So I sit down and as I'm going to shut it down, lightning struck very bright outside and at the same time there was a rather large "explosion" coming from the motherboard that I could see since the panel was off. There was a very bright blue light and a very loud "pop" noise that I could almost feel being about 3 feet away. After this the computer did not turn off, the desktop was still on the monitor and the computer was still on. Now I admit I kind of paniced and I flipped the switch on the back of the tower to turn it off, so I don't know if the computer was still responding if I would have tryed to shut it down normally.

I inspected the motherboard and everything else around the area where I say the blast come from. None of the resistors or anything have any visual damage, which suprised me, being the blast was so big. So now when I turn the computer on, here's what happens:

All the fans power on- CPU, Tower fan, Power supply fans...
CPU appears ok, no visual clues anyway.
One CDROM drive has power. One does not.
The floppy drive has no power.
Keyboard lights light on, motherboard LED is red
Monitor is ok, I checked with different computer.
Harddrives DO NOT start up. When I turn it on, the computer screen stays blank.

So my question is are my hard drives fried?I have tryed starting the system with nothing but hard drives and memory and still nothing. I have tried switching master and slave around, and different IDe cables, and nothing. I have also tried hooking them up to different power clips from the power supply, and nothing works.

Does this sound like harddrives fried or powersupply fried or what? Why would the power supply give power to seemingly random components and not others?

thanks a lot for any help you can give me!

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Member Avatar for nizzy1115

if you saw the motherboard spark it is most likely the motherboard. Most damage isnt noticable either, unless it is out of the ordinary terrible severe.

Member Avatar for cornfused

IF lighting had a visible impact on your machine everything running it was at risk of being burnt out. If it didnt fail immediatly the life span of the componets were greatly reduced meaning, if you did get it running no telling what would be the next problem.

Member Avatar for Bman5

Well I replaced the motherboard and now all the components seem to be working. the harddrives spin up, cdroms have power, etc. But still the monitor is not getting anything from the computer. Do you think the graphics card is bad? That's my only guess...

Member Avatar for nizzy1115

its possible. does your motherboard have integrated graphics?

Member Avatar for Bman5

No. Its a slightly older computer. I have a GeForce2 MX 32mb video card in it. I'm seeing them on ebay for under $5.00, so I'm gonna go ahead and give it a try, nothing to really loose I guess. Thanks for your reply!

Member Avatar for nizzy1115

Before you bid and buy a computer, make sure it is compatable! Make sure your computer has the correct sockets (PCI or agp 2, agp 4, or agp 8). Even if they are only 5 bucks, if it wont fit, it isnt worth anything to you right?

Member Avatar for Bman5

Ok, well I finally got my hands on a graphics card, but still nothing! Nothing is hooked up except the hard drive and graphics card, and RAM. Still nothing. Could this be a CPU issue?

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