How do I know if it is STORM related

A friend of mine called me last night. She is pretty behind in times, runs win98. We had a nasty storm the other night. Her system was off with a surge protector, BUT her modem quit working. Her system works fine other than now since the storm it cannot detect modem. I honestly don't think the storm did this since the system was off, unless it travelled through the line. Is that possible. she asked for any ideas on what it could be. Any suggestions?

 

While I can't say for certain what happened to your friend's modem, I can say that I have had similar problems quite a few times. After a bad electrical storm, modems seem to be inoperable... we've gone through a few modems in this way... tell me, does your friend have the phone line running through the surge protector?

 

No. I believe the phone line is into the pc itself. At the time of my conversation, it wasn't hooked up at all, they unhooked it to take phone to box to see if there was a dial tone, and there was. I am so glad I upgraded to cable.