Lightening - computer blanks out...

[Tecsyn]

We had a thunderstorm here last night, and Jr2 was using his desktop PC in his room when after a loud clap of thunder the power went off for five seconds. Everything electrical tripped then came back on, including the desktop in the living room. Jr2's screen was just black though and nothing worked. Having just forked out £90 to deal with a nasty virus on Jr1's loptap I was not pleased.

However, after googling about a bit I tried this:

Disconnect everything from computer box (keyboard, mouse, speakers, monitor etc) Pull plug on PC and leave for a couple of minutes then plug in PC box only and switch on. Immediately I could tell from the sound that it was booting up. I reconnected the monitor which confirmed things were now working. After reconnecting all the other stuff I had to do a restart before mouse, keyboard worked but otherwise its A-OK now...

Just in case anyone else has similar trouble. However, if there's a thunderstorm, best shut down and unplug PC and disconnect modem from phone line...

rgds,

Tec

[Tecsyn]

Duh, what'd I do..?

[Town Boy]

Yea the sky + boxs dont like lightening so watch out always switch them off, wirless routers etc are the same.

[Carnedyr]

I bet most people use an extension socket with multi powerpoints for TV, Sky, PC, Printer, Modem, Digital Phones etc?

If you spend just a little bit extra, you can get one with surge protection that can help prevent a lot of damage from spikes in electricity caused by lightning and even your local electricity supplier.

For example
http://www.screwfix.com/prods/40578/Electrical-Supplies/Cable-Reels-Leads/Extension-Leads/4G-2M-Surge-Protected-Extension-Lead;jsessionid=0ONB01OZEDMZSCSTHZOCFFQ

[Nooks]

If you're not in town there's a good chance that power is supplied to your house via overhead cabling (particularly where you are Tecs) which of course is very susceptable to getting a hit during a thunderstorm. All computers of course have 'filtering' on their power supplies and you may also have one of those surge protected power pallets as mentioned, but a strike of lightening on an overhead cable is a heck of a thing for a few little components to deal with.

As Tecs says, in a violent thunderstorm it perhaps best to shut down or run the loptap on batteries.

Remember -  1.21 Gigawatts!