Recently a lightning strike had the nerve to toast my Smartest Uncle’s computer and knowing who his Smartest Nephew is, he called me to see about how to find out if it could be fixed. He has a lot of stuff he needed access to A-S-A-P on his computer and needed to know his options. Could his computer be saved or is everything lost? How about the hard drive? If the computer couldn’t be saved then hopefully his data could.

When a lightning strike or massive surge hits your computer it could toast everything. Your power supply, RAM, motherboard, CPU, cards installed in your the computer and whatever peripherals are plugged in. Sometimes you’re really, really lucky and the first thing that gives up it’s life and winds up saving everything else, is the power supply.

If you try to turn your computer on and there are no lights, fans spinning or hard disk whirring it may be due to a blown/slagged power supply. This is what was happening to my Smartest Uncle’s box. So I let him know to try another power supply in it to see if it’d work and to make sure the supply he bought he could return if it didn’t work.

If this didn’t work the chances were good the motherboard, as well as other stuff was toast so it just wouldn’t be worth playing around after that, financially or time-wise and he’d need a new machine. He could access his data on a new computer, or someone else’s by removing his hard drive and putting it in a hard drive enclosure; thereby converting it to an external hard drive in the mean time. If the strike didn’t kill that too of course.

The machine was on during the strike so anything and everything that was in the rig could have been toasted. If he was lucky, the power supply sacrificed itself to protect the computer. Very, very lucky.

Thankfully the new power supply worked for him (YAY!!) and his machine was back up and running in short order and he could access his data.

When a surge or lightning strike hits your computer and it will not power on, the order you should check for damage, in my experience is the power supply, then motherboard, RAM and CPU. If the power supply is not replaced first and it is damaged from the surge/strike it could fail to regulate the voltage going to your computer properly and it could slag or further damage your machine, so don’t mess with Step #1!

Luckily the power supply was the only thing to go and I’ve seen this a lot of times in similar circumstances but a lot of other times the machine blew as well. replacing the power supply was and should be the first step in diagnosing a computer that won’t run after such an incident.

To replace a power supply is really easy for even the average joe. They’re modular, have standard connectors and usually you won’t need to spend more than $50 for a replacement unless you have a non-standard specialty rig like a slim DELL or Sony (Vaio’s UGH!). Heck, even if you have a Mac there are usually OEM replacements that are much more reasonable in price than if you ordered it from Apple. Just look online and do a little research to make sure it will work in your computer, will put put the right amount of power and has the appropriate number of power connectors and you should be good to go.

It ended happy for my Smartest Uncle. Hopefully if a similar thing befalls you or your loved ones it’ll work out happily for them too. The more you know…