Community

FransHerman

A few days ago there were a few bolts of lightning in the neighbourhood of my home. By switching on (the next day) my VAIO desktop the BIOS and Windows did not came up: a dead VAIO. Only the ventilators were running.
During the bolts of lighting the VAIO was switched off; however the power cord was directly connected (no surgemaster (like a Belkin) was used) to the mains. The VAIO was also connected to a router (Sitecom DC202) which was connected to a ADSL modem. The ADSL modem was not connected to the internet.
Besides the "dead VAIO" I found that the router was also not functioning properly anymore. I have replaced the router by a new one.
Have anyone any idea what the cause of the problem could be? Is there a "simple procedure" to execute by myself (I have an electronic engineering background) to find out what the causes of the problem of the VAIO are? I appreciate to receive advices.

kee-lo_

Really sorry to hear about this, did anything else in your home go wrong?

This could have happened via the router, as you say it's in a bad state, and it could have traveled down the ethernet cable.

If you had an arial plugged in it's easily done this way too.

Your best bet during the storms is to unplug everything specially when it's overhead.

I was in Paris on holidays and I disconnected the TV and arial as I didn't want any sort of fire

Twisted-Rizla

Best not to fly kites either.

HITS-UK

Highly likely that your local telephone exchange and/or overhead cables were hit and it has caused the damage. This is (I'm afraid) not repairable and you should take all affected machinery to a specialist to have it examined before you make an insurance claim.

My MD gets a lot of this type of problem and he has posted on this forum with this issue before.

Good luck ...

FransHerman

Hi gentlemen,
thanks for your replies. I have had unplugged everything; no influence. Also removed the graphics and tuner board, but the problem stays.
Probably the best solution is, to send the VAIO for repair.
Before doing that I want to copy all the data from the hard disk (because I had made no backups yet). The method I want to use is to put the hard disk in an external bay with USB2 output and connect via USB2 this disk to anther computer to be able to copy the data to this other computer.
What is your opinion about this this?