LIGHTNING STIKES – THANK YOU MICHAEL DELL

Most users will be at some time affected by a power surge due to lightning striking the telephone line or the electrical supply. In some instances that can mean the replacement of the newly-fried modem, which acts as a fuse and blows, or even worse, the replacement of the computer, when the modem was fried and other components as well, i.e. PSU, motherboard, CPU, graphics card. The safeguard solution is to unplug the modem from the line, and also switch off the PC when it is not being used. Yeah. Who does that ? No, not me, I’m full-time wired and too lazy to unplug.

So whats to do ? Modem fried scenario ? First of all test with the modem diagnostics tool in Control Panel / Modems ( assuming your running Windows, and at this stage even if you can run Windows your lucky ). If the diagnostics doesn’t work then its switch off and UNPLUG the PC and get under the hood. Remove and look at the modem, specifically the chip with the manufacturers name on it. There may be a small mark on it which indicates the ceramic is blown – it looks like a wee chip has been gouged out. Just replace the modem, its cheap and expendable. I don’t give modem warranties any more, lightning strike is an “act of God” according to the insurance companies.

More serious damage ? i.e. the PC won’t boot up at all ? Remove the modem and try to reboot again – you may be lucky…… If not, ie it doesn’t reboot, then remove the case PSU and test with another known-to-be-working PSU. Once again, you’re lucky if it sparks up to life at this stage. If there are no signs of life then its “Sayonara PC!!”

You now have at least two options. Option 1 is to rescue the existing un-fried components, typically the RAM, optical drive, and hard drive will be unaffected. If the case PSU is blown then it is likely the front switch may be duff as well. Easier and less hassle to replace the case and PSU, and add new motherboard, CPU & Fan, modem etc into the new built PC with the original HDD, Optical, RAM and any other surviving components. However, this may be a costly exercise depending on the new components which you choose i.e. latest motherboard, super-duper SLI video card, some more ram, near-the-top-of-the-range-CPU & FAN, sexy-looking case, additional optical etc. Also, you need to be fairly familiar and competent building PCs. Yeah, I know, anyone can do it with a basic toolkit such as a screwdriver or even a kitchen knife. So why are there loads of PC Repairs shops ? Think about it. The average human is klutz around electronics.

So therefore consider Option 2 : Replace the PC with a barebones brand-name system. Depending on the vendor, most web shops do “barebones” PCs at budget prices. These are configured with “matching components” which will work together i.e. a mboard / cpu / ram configuration. Just insert the surviving components (correctly) and power up. You’ll have to re-register Windows again as the original installed hardware has changed. This is easy to do by telephone if a little time consuming ( and the offshore-based Microsoft helpdesk are excellent and very patient indeed !) YOU WILL NEED YOUR WINDOWS XP PRODUCT KEY FROM THE LABEL ON THE ORIGINAL CASE.

If you have searched the web for barebones systems you may well be attracted to a completely new full PC system. Once again it is easy to pick up a budget brand-name box with cpu & fan, ram, video card, optical drive, hdd, and operating system, which is usually pre-installed and only requires activation. Voila! You have a new PC and all is sweetness and light yet again. However, what are you going to do with the old kit? Especially the hard drive which contained all of your precious data? Once again the simple solution is to source a cheap 3.5” USB external drive kit which will accept the old drive and enable you to connect it to the new PC and transfer data from it. You can then use it as an external backup medium and sleep easier knowing that the precious data is safe.

At this stage you will value the strategy of keeping your data in a single folder such as My Documents, or better still on a data CD or DVD. And you did export your web favourites and email address book and messages? Yeah of course you did….. NOT! Two applications which you will now appreciate – Genie Backup Manager v4 is free and will backup data, folders, email identities with address books and messages into a self-extracting zip file which can reduce the stress of manually recovering everything. COBIAN BACKUP 8 will also backup data files and folders and like Genie can be auto-scheduled. I like Cobian. Its much faster than Genie but doesn’t do the email account backup unless you specify the precise identity to backup. ( a bit more complex this as it means copying hidden folders etc).

Oh yeah! - nearly forgot - where does Michael Dell fit into the above experience? The last electrical storm we had produced about a half dozen fried PCs. Four of these were Dell PCs; the other two were e-Machines PCs. You’ll note that these are “budget” products, with a high-level of component integration. None were modem replacements. Two were kit rebuilds with new boards, cpus, video cards & cases. These had big SATA hard drives and expensive video cards, so the rebuild was also expensive due to matching the kit to the cards. The other four were complete replacement PCs. Two of these replacements also bought 19” TFT monitors to match the new PC. Out of the fried kit I managed to cobble together two working PCs with reasonable specification. Also, by purchasing the afore-mentioned external hard drive enclosures I now have two more backup units. The old saying is very true in this instance, “It’s an ill wind that blows no good to someone”