Need Advice

[Creature]

Hi Guys,

Ove rthe weekend we had a lightning strike on our house. The power went out and also tripped at the main board. My PC was plugged in at the time.

After I switched the electricity back on I went and turned on my PC. She was not all well. There is a white line across my monitor. The machine starts to load, but when the login screen appears, there are line all across the screen and the image is not aligned properly. I can make out that the login screen is displayed and can see when I type in my password. After entering the password and pressing "enter" I get a blue screen error and the machine restarts itself. The same happens over and over. It has gone in once or twice, but after about 2 mins there are red dots all over the screen and she freezes throwing a blue screen error and the cycle starts over again.

All advice would be appreciated. Thank You....

 

[PostmanPot]

Probably motherboard (they usually go with lightning AFAIK (lucky I'm in Cape Town)), and graphics card (unless you have onboard graphics).

Need PC's specs. But it could be cheap to fix (replace certain components) depending on what mobo/components you have.

 

[RoganDawes]

Try unplugging as many bits as possible to eliminate them as culprits. i.e. external USB/firewire/eSATA devices, any PCI cards, etc that can be spared.

Sounds like the monitor itself is OK, but maybe your graphics card is poked, or else the mobo itself.

Also sounds like the disk is OK, fwiw.

 

[Creature]

Yeah, sure the disc is fine, and def the screen. Have Intel Q6600, ATI HD4870, 4GB Ram, Asus P5Q Mobo....

The thing is, I want to claim from the insurence if it is possible, but not too sure what all could have popped. Its damn annoying

 

[Y'all Qaeda]

Claim enough for a new PC. Say the motherboard fried and thus shorted out the graphics card which in turn caused a massive spark that burnt the case, which caught fire and burnt the optical drive, which exploded and destroyed the harddrive which then fell and broke the ram.

If they fall for that story. Change insurance because you are paying for others peoples' lies.

 

[howardb]

Yeah, agree - either the graphics card or the motherboard - the last strike we had a few years ago yielded similar errors to what you're having - turned out that it had blown the graphics card, but the motherboard was fine in my case. I tested with another spare GPU and all was well, so only replaced the GPU...

 

[Creature]

Hahahahahah, I wish I could get a new PC, but believe in the whole Karma thing. And will rather be truthfull and just let them have a look..... But yeah, I do need a new mobo and card btw (and cpu, ram, monitor, blu-ray, hdd, psu, case) hehehehehe. Just hope all ends well