House struck by lightning, computer not working

[Toasted Onions]

Somebody I know has been having trouble with their computer since their house got struck by lightning. The surge seems to have come up through the ground cable, destroying the modem. Now his computer won't boot up at all. The LEDs come on, but nothing else happens. He replaced the power supply, but nothing changed. Does it sound like the motherboard is fried? Or can we get it working again (and how)?

Thanks in advance.

[slinky]

take out all expansion cards except video and try again.

[Bovon]

If at all possible, use only ram, cpu and a video card..and those should be from a working system or new source. That way, if no video comes to screen..you know that the mainboard or cpu..maybe both are dead, and you can move on.

[Brainchild]

Sounds like it's toast, just done the same thing,lost 2 computers when lightning struck my house.

[VHockey86]

Bummer =(
Do the fans start to turn on or is the whole thing dead?

Expensive way to learn that you should ALWAYS use a good surge protector and/or a UPS

[elroy]

A friend just got struck and evidently wasn't properly protected. Her machine would not boot until the modem and network card were removed from the pc. Evidently one or both had shorts after being struck.

[soulja]

might be fryed all chips and all

[joker_927]

Hope you get it working... Mom's computer is plugged into a $100 battery-backup, yet one day during a thunderstorm, it shutoff and wouldn't boot. The phone line wasn't surge protected and it blew the modem.

Computer don't like to boot with blown modems.

[Toasted Onions]

Originally posted by VHockey86
Do the fans start to turn on or is the whole thing dead?

Expensive way to learn that you should ALWAYS use a good surge protector and/or a UPS

No, the fans don't start. And even though I didn't actually ask if he was using a surge protector, I know that in the past he's always been very careful with these things, so I'm sure he was. It wasn't the power line that was the problem though, it came through the internet cable.

I forgot to mention that he replaced the modem in addition to the power supply, but it didn't fix the problem.

[Terminal23]

The only sure fire way to prevent this from happening is to unplug everything.Theres no surge protector out the that can save you from a direct hit.Then again,if that happens,your house is probably history to,never mind the computer.