If not for bad luck i would have no luck.

ok this is whats going on and it just makes you want to cry

Last nite i had a friend over we was playing flatout 2 over my lan when a storm started to come through so i shut down my computer and told him to shut down my backup rig and he did but i was in such a hurry to get some things up out side i for got to unplug everything. Well when we came back in we sat down and was playing a card game and next thing we know theres a big flash out light and a boom right with it we could not see or hear for a good few mins and that was it. well it hit me and i thought oh crap so i started checking things and yep my fears where right on and more. My computer would not come on it fired the modem in it and the mother board and maybe also my EVGA 6800 (because using that card my screen and very dark), My backup rig turned on fine but theres a rainbow through the middle of the monitor, and my mothers new computer it blow the 19inch widescreen LCD monitor and its modem but other then that it seems fine i put a nother modem in it and hooked it up to my monitor and am on it right now (my screen seems fine now thats why i think also my video card in my main rig) lets see it also toasted all our tv's (4 of them 19inch 27inch 29inch and 32inch) also out sat tv boxes and my slimline PS2 (though i think just its little power box is blown the thing you plug it into) busted a water line out side too. every tube light in the house blown leaving a burning smell in the house. and it burned the under ground phone line at the road apart. I guess my back up rig is the only one that did not get hurt i guess because it did not have a modem in it. oh yea also my friends car was being fixed but guess what during the storm a tree fell on it and the guys house that was fixing it. all this from a storm that was not even bad. i bet theres other things i am missing right now but damn what else could there be thats about all my stuff so now i am $h!t out of luck no money to fix anything. i guess i am lucky i have a AMD processor and mother board to throw in my main till i can get it fixed and i just backed it up like the day before this happen. I know it could of been worst but damn:cry now off to get help with my main rig because its BSOD when it restarts after install of SP2:cry

 

Sorry to hear that N5638J, close lightening strikes are a nasty piece of business. If you make a list of all the damage you should be able to claim it on your House Insurance, especially if you are willing and capable of fixing it all, and just need the cash for the replacement parts. Just glad you weren't hurt Bro

 

we rent and we live to far from a fire hose hook up to get renters Insurance (i don't know how to feel right now) If i had the money of course i could fix the computers but not the tv's. and thanks for the thoughts

 

Hey how about "Content Insurance" N5638J you do not need to be near a Fire Hydrant for that I believe, also check with the Owner, they may have Insurance that will cover "Rentors Contents". I know I did for my Rentors?

 

We don't know and yea my EVGA card is messed up when my monitor is pluged into its VGA port the screen is dark and will not get any brighter but when i plug it into the DVI port its fine so i guess i will see if i can RMA it.

 

damn my EVGA card cant be RMA'ed 3-4 months past

 

OMG N5638J that sucks so bad. If that happened to be i would be screaming What the F**K. Sorry that happened.

 

I dug out my old 80's 27inch tv and hooked it up and it also has the rainbow on the screen too and it was not even plugged in or anything but its working (tv i was using won't show nothing just black) and my sat box seems to be working for the most part even tho the switch is screwed so the sat tv is messed up mine still works. i sat a car speaker box in front of my tv and it took over half the rainbow marks off the tv lol. so because of the switch out side on the dish is messed up my sat box is the only one working. we have total 2 dish network boxes one is a dual box (runs 2 tvs off one) and a single the single and tv 1 on the dual box is not working because of the switch and mines the only one working lol

 

omg i am so sorry how much of a loss is it for you?

 

Heres a list of whats been damaged and what is no good.

2x 56K modems
ASUS P4S8X-X mobo
17inch slim gemstar CRT monitor
17inch Magview monitor
19inch wide screen HP LCD monitor
VGA port on my EVGA 6800
32inch Sharp tv
29inch Magnavox TV
27inch Sharp tv
27inch Sony tv
19inch TV
Power supply for a slimline PS2
100+feet of my own phone line i got to rerun
10x $2 tube lights
some house wiring is not working now.

no telling what else

You should of seen how the ends on the phone lines looked. It looked like someone took a lighter to the ends and melted them and turned them black. The modem that was in my computer blow up pieces of the little plastics covers on the modem blow off while the parts under it burned apart.

 

That sucks so bad it looks likes its going to coast you a lot. I am so sorry

 

If i had the money i would say no problem and just bulid me a new computer and buy what ever else but some of that stuff people gave me but like the ASUS mobo and other stuff it took me months to save up to buy come from being low income and not able to work. i am lucky i had a extra modem and i did not sell that Abit mobo and amd processor if i would of sold them when i had the chance my computer would not be running right now and maybe not for a long time.

 

thats good you didn't sell them

 

Yea it is. I miss my ASUS no matter how hard i pushed a overclock it would never kill the processor or its self and it would always reset its self so i would not have to open my case to pull its batt for a reset. (got to love that crash free bios) now get this when i seen the burned mark on the bottom of the mobo i seen it was close to the usb ports so i pulled the jumper there near them to disable the usb and it booted up to bios but nothing else lol before i pulled the jumper it would not do anything. when it booting in to the bios i got to check afew things and my processor was still working so thats how i know its still good lol

 

ok you need to have a funeral of your ASUS motherboard LOL or is it still good?

 

The ASUS board is dead i am glad it did not take the ram, processor or VC with it

 

thats good it didn't take those out. So what are you going to do with it now cause you said your going to miss it LOL

 

Sorry if i am being dumb

 

I don't know might shot it up with my friends car15 rifle (smaller version of the M16) or just store it way.

 

roflmao thats a good way car15 rifle roflmaoroflmaoroflmao i would do that instead of storing it away

 

damn i hate dialup trying to get back up to date takes forever.

 

Sorry to hear that, hope you can get back on your feet. To be safe, I went out and bought a surge protector before I hooked up my computer. All my electronics are plugged into one and they even cover coaxial, phone, and Ethernet cabling as well. At $20 a pop, you can't beat that kind of protection.

 

yeah i know dial up sucks so bad

 

ok it seems it also fried the network card in my back up rig good thing i got afew network cards

 

damn that sucks all those electronics gone in an instant i would be pulling my hair out right now. and the rifle thing, hilarious. Good thing I always keep my appliances connected to surge protectors.

 

Dang that that is some rough luck N5638J! Good luck getting everything back up and running. I had a pretty bad thunderstorm a while back, took out both of my onboard NIC's, but everything else was ok.

Keep this in mind about surge protectors: Most of them are only good for one surge, and you may not know when it happens. After a surge, they are just power splitters. For expensive gear, you might want to spend a little more for better protection. Or even get a UPS. I can't remember all the details about the surge protectors, but I do remember that the cheap ones do not work for long from a class I took a while back.

E

 

surge protectors are no good here because all the plug ins in this house are over 50years old only 2 plug wires work in the house so you got to remove the third end to plug in something and i know its not good to do that.

 

In April alone, I had two PCs die, one Laptop, and one iMac... not to mention almost losing both stepsons in different incidents. I think I can understand where you're coming from.

 

hey N5638J, sorry to hear man, at least no one was hurt....physically
i thought EVGA do lifetime warrenties.....but im not sure if they cover close lightning strikes though.... just a thought

 

Yes EVGA offers lifetime warranties but for EVGA stuff bought as of November 1st 2006 my video card what about 1 year and 4months ago.

 

Really feel for you N5638J. Thankfully you and others weren't injured.

Per an earlier post, "Contents Insurance" should be available for owners and/or renters (otherwise items of people renting are open to any risk). If you have a "contents insurance", check out entitlements and "Terms of Conditions", hopefully it should cover your situation.

Someone else also mentioned something along the lines of a "residential current circuit breaker" (something I have installed) which immediately shuts down electricity if any problem/surge is detected. This is a very good investment and something I've found of proven use.

Hope something positive gets sorted out to your advantage.

Cheers

LS

 

only 2 big breakers tripped out of 20small ones and 4 big ones not counting the main breaker it did not trip.

 

Oh now i am Pi$$ed HP will not fix her computer now because I put windows XP Pro sp2 on it in place of Media center 2005 because of media center always crashing (well thats what that guy said on the phone) but even on there site it shows step by step for upgrading the OS, hardware or what ever and it says nothing about it voiding its warranty. I think y'all don't know how mad i am now. She should of just let me build her a computer to start with and not buy a store PC. Because as y'all know with home built PCs each part carries there own warranty

 

You might want to read your warranty carefully. I ran into the same issue with a Gateway (I think) where I used to work. It had XP Home, and my former boss put XP Pro on it, and we could not get drivers from their website, had to get them from the various hardware makers. Major PITA! They claimed it voided the warranty, I found out it only voided tech help on the software side, not hardware. Not sure if HP is the same or not, but look around on their website.

Good luck! Maybe you should buy a lottery ticket this weekend, your luck has to change soon!

E

 

Anyway you can reformat the hard drive with the recovery disks? And buy a lottery ticket you luck mite change like fred said

 

the dang thing did not come with disks . and in the book that came with it clearly says software has no effect on the hardware warranty

anyone here work for HP/Compaq? because it would really help

 

eBay for the Motherboard, if you can match motherboards you can also keep your windows install, mostly.

It is possible to run a 3rd wire for ground for things like computers. If you can attach it to metal plumbing that is going into the ground, or run wire into earth yourself. That 3rd wire is not an actual conductor, but a safety feature, generally the power company ties ground and neutral together at the pole, and then earths ground.

 

Also, you may want to buy a few 2 prong to 3 prong adapters. The bottom prong gets "grounded" by the screw:

http://www.radioshack.com/sm-3-prong-grounding-adapter-2-pack--pi-2104010.html

That way you can use those surge protectors.

Then you could buy one of those surge protectors that have those $50,000 warranties. Or whatever they are.

 

We found where the lighting hit. It hit a pine tree theres marks all the way up and down the tree and even a hole in the ground. Its missing bark and sap draining all over the tree. Heres a few pics of the tree and the hole. can that tree die from this? Oh BTW that tree is about 15feet from the house
http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/7380/sunp0001ak8.jpg
http://img530.imageshack.us/img530/2442/sunp0002uw5.jpg
http://img182.imageshack.us/img182/5233/sunp0003sg5.jpg

 

Certainly lucky distance wise with that lightening. Thankfully you weren't hurt.

Tree appears to be mature and I reckon strong enough to survive. I've seen a tree in a park near where I used to live that was regularly struck by lightening...once it was halved!...Council cut away and cleaned up its dead branches and it later started new shoots. Now it looks just as big and healthy as surrounding trees.