Interesting Surge issue

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Pascoflyer

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Jul 26, 2013
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I've been unplugging my computer every time i'm not using it and have it plugged into a surge protector when I am because my house's electrical situation is not good. We had a huge lightning storm last night (computer unplugged, but ethernet port plugged in) and our modem got fried. My computer was unplugged, but when I turned it on, a couple strange things happened.

None of my external devices are working, headset, mouse, 360 controller etc. and when I turn it off, it simply restarts instead including when I force shut it down with the power button. It does not know it has an Ethernet port, and the light that shows activity in the port is always on, but the computer can't tell the difference between my putting my finger in the port or an Ethernet cable.

Some of this has been resolved, i now have use of my external accessories except the 360 controller, but the Ethernet port is still not working and windows says it cant find the driver for it. I installed my mobo drivers from disk again, but still no luck.

My biggest fear is that my brand new motherboard has been damaged. Apart from these issues it seems to run and boot fine. It seems more likely that the drivers got scrambled somehow, and I just need to update them. However, I installed my drivers from disk for my motherboard and the 360 controller with no results. I had the drivers installed from disk before the surge as well, as the websites say I have up to date drivers.

Specs:
AMD FX-8350 Vishera 4.0GHz (4.2GHz Turbo) Socket AM3+ 125W Eight-Core Desktop Processor FD8350FRHKBOX

GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3 AM3+ AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

ASUS HD7750-1GD5-V2 Radeon HD 7750 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card

GeIL 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900) Desktop Memory Model GEV38GB1866C10DC

Seagate Barracuda ST500DM002 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive - OEM

Windows 8 32 bit OEM.
 
Solution
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you left an electrically conductive wire that was conducting power to your pc plugged in and lighting hit your internet providers line frying everything attached to it. you're lucky you have such a good newer board as the over volt protection for your ethernet port to the rest of the system because it stopped your whole machine from being destroyed.

some lightning must have either A) leaked into the chip that controls your Wake on LAN functions for the ethernet before the over volt tripped the circuit B) there is some kind of programming error going on concerning your now wrecked ethernet port and the Wake on LAN functions.

try disabling that ethernet port in windows and also in the motherboard BIOS as the port is now wrecked, see if...
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makkem

makkem

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Jan 22, 2012
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Hi
If your modem got fried there is a good chance that the ethernet circuitry on your motherboard also got damaged .
If everything else works on your motherboard then your best option would be to buy a Network Interface Card and plug your ethernet cable into that.
These cards are inexpensive.
You also may want to think about getting a surge protector with ethernet protection.
 
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thx1138v2

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Jun 18, 2011
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You said it was a brand new motherboard so I'm guessing this sytem hasn't collected dust bunnies on the inside. I see a lot of people put the compuer cases on the floor where they collect a lot of dust and that will sometimes cause problems because static electricity collects in the dust and given minimal proding by atmospheric static electricity like that builds up during lightning storms can do harm.

My guess is that you did not disconnect the Etehernet cable from the port on the machine. Lightning can travel in all directions and get into just about any wire or, at the least, create surges. I once had ligtning hit across the street from me in a suburban neighborhood and it traveled across the ground (it was wet from rain) and into my electrical and communications wiring. It wasn't strong enough to damage appliances but it did take out both an old dialup modem and a cable modem and the network card attached to it. The power line was attached in my case however. I suspect that somewhere in your comm lines there is a ground attachment somewhere. If the router or gateway you use didn't have its power cable removed and the Ethernet cable was attached between them it could have gotten in that way or if any part of the Ethernet cable was near or under the ground and wasn't properly shielded it could cause the same problem.

I recently switched to Uverse and had a gateway toasted by lightning some distance away that came in through the phone company wires. That was kind of similar in that some things worked and some didn't after the lightning strike.

You can test it by buying a cheapie network card (guessing $15) and disabling the onboard ethernet. If that fixes the network problem then the whole motherboard would be suspect because that's a clear indication that the surge got into the mobo at least somewhat.

Lightning is some nasty stuff. You have to build a hardened system to escape all of the possible entry points.
 
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thx1138v2

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Jun 18, 2011
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Since it was unplugged the hard drives would not have been active and since drivers are software loaded from the hard drive it wouldn't have been able to damage or corrupt any driver files so probably not a driver issue. The only way to test that for sure would be to reload the OS. You might try a "repair install" of the OS.

I forgot about the shutdown issue though. That indicates either power supply or mobo. There's some hardware handshaking that goes on between the two on power up and power down so that again points to a hardware problem but it's hard to tell which unless you have another computer to test the power supply separately. If it performs correctly in another undamaged computer that would isolate it to mobo problems but if the power supply is still faulty in another machine it also could be both the mobo and PSU took hits.
 
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f-14

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you left an electrically conductive wire that was conducting power to your pc plugged in and lighting hit your internet providers line frying everything attached to it. you're lucky you have such a good newer board as the over volt protection for your ethernet port to the rest of the system because it stopped your whole machine from being destroyed.

some lightning must have either A) leaked into the chip that controls your Wake on LAN functions for the ethernet before the over volt tripped the circuit B) there is some kind of programming error going on concerning your now wrecked ethernet port and the Wake on LAN functions.

try disabling that ethernet port in windows and also in the motherboard BIOS as the port is now wrecked, see if that fixes your shut down issue, if it does:

try getting an add in NIC card

or if you have the option, connecting to a new/used modem with a USB port.

buy a surge protector with phone/cable and or ethernet cat5/6 plug in protectors not just for your computer, but your TV's/cable box/dish box antenna and phone hook ups, land line telephones. and if you have an outdoor tv antenna make sure it has a ground wire connnected to a grounding rod or all connected devices to that line inside your house need to be connected to a surge protector.

or have an electrician install a whole house surge protector in your fuse panel box and just have your telephone and cable and satellite lines connected to a surge protector plugged into an outlet.

electricity seeks out the shortest then easiest path of least resistance (does not prefer toasters wires or heating elements when gold wires to ground are available)
 
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Solution
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Pascoflyer

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Jul 26, 2013
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So, apparently it was just the port that got fried, i picked up a wireless adapter and everything seems to be fine, though some games seem to have uninstalled themselves and i may need to call windows support because it just asked me to activate my windows which should most certianly be activated. We'll see if any other issues crop up. Running through a new surge protector seems to have fixed the restarting thing too. Thanks for the brainstorming guys!
 
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