Question related to electricity?

Hi, I was hoping I could get a few opinions on whether or not my desktop is salvagable. I'm really kind of wondering if a lightning strike could cause damage to any components that would cause a new PSU to fry after the old one was replaced. Here's a rundown:

I bought a new desktop computer from EBay around Black Friday last year. It was when Microsoft had that Live Search Cashback thing so I got like $200+ off from that.

Basic specs of the rig: the cheapest Intel Quadcore CPU, CD/DVD RW, 500GB HD, 8/12GB RAM (I don't remember offhand), there's no highspeed videocard to my knowledge (the computer was purchased with the large amount of CPU/RAM in mind in order to learn video editing).

As far as PSU/Motherboard, I don't know the details. I'll be honest right here, I don't know a ton about hardware. I can swap hard drives out and some basic stuff like that, but my skillset isn't building computers from scratch.

Anyway, about 5 months ago (Florida) lightning struck my NEIGHBOR's house. The resulting power surge made my computer turn off, and then not turn back on. Several electronics in our house were damaged. As soon as that happened, I went around unplugging EVERYTHING until the storm passed in case of more lightning.

When I went back under my desk after the storm passed, here's the deal. There's an electrical outlet on the wall under my desk, with openings to plug in two electrical plugs (so I guess the term is two electrical sockets?). I only had one power strip (it's one of those powersquids, I think with like 5 sockets). Powersquid was plugged into the lower socket of the two on the wall. I don't know if the computer itself was plugged into the wall or the powersquid, but being that I've done this long enough I want to say I had the computer and the 24 inch monitor both plugged into the powersquid for the surge protection.

When I plugged everything back in after the storm to check it out, the computer wouldn't start. I'd press the power button, the green light would come on for a second or two sometimes, the computer would make a few noises (not beeps, just whirring spinning ones), then just turn back off. After a couple tries I started to smell something vaguely like burntness (no visible fire or anything, just a hint of burnt in the air) so I immediately stopped and unplugged everything.

The smell seemed to be coming from where the PSU was, so that naturally made me think "PSU is probably fried", at the very least. Keep in mind, I'm not a hardware guy so that was obviously just a guess.

As far as the two outlets go, I've had everything plugged back in and temporarily used some old Pentium 4 computers plugged into both outlets and no problems for the past 4-5 months.

Not having a lot of cash, and not wanting to buy a new computer if I can repair the old one, I finally floated someone an email on Craigslist offering a trade for a 5MP cameraphone, one of the P4 desktops I wasn't using, and gas money. Guy came over, seemed to know what he was doing (far better than me), and honestly seemed legit. It's 6:45 am, so I'm waiting until at least 8 before I give him a call back this morning.

He said the PSU and the fan/heatsink were shot, he could get one and have it repaired in two days. I gave him the cameraphone as the initial payment, he took the non-working desktop with him. Called me back to arrange the pickup of the "fixed" computer. We met (public place), made the final exchange, I got home and had to go do another job so I didn't get around to plugging it in to test it until 4am this morning (a few hours ago).

For reference when he called me to arrange the final drop off of my fixed computer, he told me "Yeah, it's working 100% no problems."

When I first tried turning it on, nothing happened. I didn't see any lights or anything come alive, so I checked all the cables. Pressed it again. Lights on the desktop came on, noises like it was starting up, good good, but no picture was being output to the monitor over the DVI connection. After a minute or so it seemed the computer shut off. Checked the connections again, plugged in the older VGA cable hoping to get any kind of output to the screen to see what was up. After pressing the power button a few times (the first couple times it repeated the above), it started to boot like everything was fine. The entire BIOS whatever ran through like normal, got to the Windows Boot Options (I previously was dual booting Windows 7 Beta earlier in the year to give it a look). The first time I went through this I had forgotten to plug in the keyboard (USB reciever for a wireless one), so I figured I'd just let the countdown timeout and I'd plug it in once it booted to the desktop.

Countdown for choosing operating system finished, then the screen for "was not shut down correctly". Let the countdown for that hit zero, it attempted to boot regularly. The Vista "booting" bar appeared for a few seconds, then the entire machine shutdown again.

Plug in keyboard, repeat this about 4 times. Everything seemed fine in BIOS and whatnot, so I don't think it was a software/firmware problem. The boot procedure went fine until Vista started booting then it's like all the power to the machine was just cut.

Now after about 4 times all of a sudden I heard a weird noise (almost a little high pitched). The noise really didn't seem right, so I put my ear next to the desktop to figure out where it was coming from. Sounded like it was coming from the PSU, started getting a little louder and I thought I was just starting to smell that burning smell again, so I slid the side of the case off real quick (the machine was still running through BIOS startup on the monitor), just in time for the PSU to make a few intermittent other spastic noises over the next 2-3 seconds, followed by a loud POP and a small visible spark of electricity. I immediately dove underneath the desk and pulled the plug.

Naturally, I haven't tried turning the machine back on. I'm going to assume right here that this "new" power supply is fried. In a few hours, I'm going to call the guy back, and I'm 95% sure he won't be dodging my calls. Unless he was installing crap/faulty components (which I honestly don't think is the case), what could have caused this? Could a damaged motherboard/cpu from the lightning strike cause some kind of weird feedback to the PSU that would knock out a newly replaced PSU?

When he first came to my house to pick up the system, he originally opened up the desktop talked about in this thread, and removed one of the PSU from one of the Pentium4 systems and swapped it in. I SAW my computer boot completely into Vista (the desktop) that day, we just couldn't use that PSU because the cables were too short for the quad-core's case. He also noted at that time that the fan was stuttering and pretty much not spinning. That's when he took the desktop to replace the PSU and fan/heatsink.

I honestly think this guy more or less knows what he's doing from everything I mentioned above. So, verdict/opinions please, is it likely some other piece of hardware (motherboard/CPU/RAM?) that caused the new PSU to fry? Bad wiring/plugging stuff in (internally) on the tech guy's part?

I'm just a bit at a loss here and want to know what's going on, whether I should abandon this desktop completely or if it has any real chance that it can be fixed. In my limited experience with hardware, I've never come across this issue so I defer to the masses here that know far more than I do.

I really appreciate the advice and will try some of that as soon as I get home from driving my dad into work.

Does the above you mentioned explain why the new PSU would die all of a sudden though?

Boot problems
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] t-problems

Combination of checklist and maintenance ideas.