Strange problem

i was at my friends house and i brought my pc to play some metro 2033 system specs are (600 watt stealthXtreme ocz psu,ASRock A770DE motherboard. amd phenom 9550@2.640ghz, 6gb ram 2 kingston and 4 samsung, dual msi 5770's, dual seagate barracuda hdd's, and dvd drive, cpu cooler is coolermaster hyper 212 evo) when i plugged my pc into the wall it would not boot and all of the lights in my computer 3 red led fans and 4 red led strips were flashing on and off while the fans would spin up then slow down and speed up again with the same speed of the flashing lights.but the problem went away when plugged in through a surge protector just curious about what could cause this.