My Computer got messed up with a power surge

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My Computer got messed up with a power surge

February 17, 2006, 09:39:47 AM

Having a horrible day so far. This morning I was waked up by an electrical whine sound coming from my computer as our power went off due to a wind storm last night.

I have a custom built gaming PC and it won't boot up and gives me some error that says due to an unexpected shutdown or power failure windows will not boot to protect your computer from furthur damage. I attempted to repair WinXP pro with the install disc as many sites recommend in this case. But the same error comes up.

I have a surge protector that the computer was plugged into. And still something happened internally with the pc. My Mom mentioned about turning this into our home owners insurance since she remembers signing something about if computers/tv get hit my lightning.

Has anyone else ever ran into this with insurances? How long does it take? Any details that you can provide me on these steps? I am ticked off to no end as I lost all my homework/essays for school that I have been working on for the past week.

My Computer got messed up with a power surge

Reply #1 – February 17, 2006, 09:48:11 AM

Steve, sorry to hear that. I hope someone more knowledgable with PC's steps in here to help, but FWIW, that has happened to me on my Mac before (after thunderstorm, the power wouldn't stay on). We have a power management unit (PMU) reset button built onto the motherboard--pressing that solved the problem. Also, we have a special 1/2-AA battery that is our equivalent of a CMOS. Sometimes removing and replacing that helps. Like I said, don't know if that will help you or not, but I hope there's something similar that you can do to save your machine.

My Computer got messed up with a power surge

Reply #2 – February 17, 2006, 09:51:54 AM

heh...same thing happned here. i have a brand new but dead dell collecting dust because i dont know that to do with it....

My Computer got messed up with a power surge

Reply #3 – February 17, 2006, 10:03:03 AM

computer are part of homeowners and renters insurance.
also "surge" protectors are junk, what you need is a UPS (uninteruptable power supply) ie> a battery backup. these feel power from the battery only and are "better" protection against that kind of fault.
you most likely have hardware damage if lightning struck near by. if you have your reciepts you should be able to pay your deductable and get it replaced.

the hard drive is most likely salvagable, you should remove it and see if you can pull the data off of it from another machine.

also, you can try loading another version of windows on the machine to back up and data you have, just choose "winnt2" or some other name as the folder to install windows to. if nothing is too broken you can then back up your data so you can reinstall. (WARNING, be carefull with this, only recommended for experienced techs).

can you give a more discriptive error, like what it does as it posts (boots) and what screens it gives, ect..
are all the fans working, does anything appear not to work physically, is anythign getting hot, are thier any funny smells coming from the power supply.. ect.

edit: i just can't type today

My Computer got messed up with a power surge

Reply #4 – February 17, 2006, 11:16:58 AM

It seems to be ok mechanically. All the fans are running. The one of the cpu, video card, and my case fans are fine.

I turn the pc on, it goes to the WIN XP PRO screen for like .5 second. Then it goes to a blue screen
UNBOOTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME

And it explains this error has occured due to an unexpected shutdown or a power failure. Windows will not load up to prevent damage to your computer.
It says:
Try rebooting in safemode (this doesn't work, it goes to the same screen and then i can't go anywhere from there)
Restart computer with WIN XP disc. Boot from cdrom, after it loads press r to repair windows.
SO I did this, and as it is loading the files immediately goes back to the blue screen with the same error.

I'm rather knowledgable about computers. I'm active at Penn State's I.T. department and work on computers regularly. I have never had this happen before. One time years back lightning hit my first pc that I owned and it had black burnouts on the motherboard. This one appears to have nothing to that extent.

But the sound it made when the power surged , woke me up and freaked the hell outta my dog who was lying on my end of the bed. He is still afraid of anything right now and he hasn't moved from the living since this morning. Quite odd since he is a doberman and really never acts like this.

My Computer got messed up with a power surge

Reply #5 – February 17, 2006, 11:42:22 AM

Your computer is haunted. And the dog knows it. You'll need a young priest and an old priest.

My Computer got messed up with a power surge

Reply #6 – February 17, 2006, 12:09:02 PM

yah, if it was shut down, the heads will rest on the boot sectors, as that was the last thing it "read", so chances are your partician got hosed, do you have a bootable cd (bartPE or the like) try running checkdisk to see if it will repair the partition.

still try pulling the disk out to see if the data is salvagable, your boot sectors may be bad, but that doesn't mean the data is.

i would also run any diags I could on the hardware after something like that.

My Computer got messed up with a power surge

Reply #7 – February 17, 2006, 12:22:09 PM

in my case, i think it got wacked by lightning through the cable modem. the modem turned up junk and the computer wouldnt do much when you turned it on...the motherboared has a little green light right on it that came on as well as the fans and stuff but thats about it....

My Computer got messed up with a power surge

Reply #8 – February 17, 2006, 02:01:50 PM

I did have to mess around alot with the cable modem. It was all screwy. I had to unpower it and push the on/off button a bunch of times before it started to come back to life.
I'll check the HD when I get back from school.

My Computer got messed up with a power surge

Reply #9 – February 17, 2006, 02:39:03 PM

Normally when windows gets that error boot into safe mode then restart normally. If you continue to get the error repalce the HD,

My Computer got messed up with a power surge

Reply #10 – February 17, 2006, 03:23:46 PM

Instead of doing a repair install from the XP disc, try hitting the f2 button as the windows setup is loading. That should get you into a "dos mode" type screen that should allow you to run chkdisk and other system diagnostic tools built into the cd.

My Computer got messed up with a power surge

Reply #11 – February 17, 2006, 04:13:16 PM

Quote from: nirvanagod

Instead of doing a repair install from the XP disc, try hitting the f2 button as the windows setup is loading. That should get you into a "dos mode" type screen that should allow you to run chkdisk and other system diagnostic tools built into the cd.

it! I wan't to say that and look all cool.

But Steve that WILL Fix an unmountable boot volume. I've done it hundreds of times to clients pc's.

My Computer got messed up with a power surge

Reply #12 – February 18, 2006, 07:59:07 AM

shiznit, i have never seen one of those repairs work, unless you have a current asr set you best bet is to keep a good boot cd (pick your favorite flavor, i use a modified bartPE with a nice xp gui) around, as it will have all the nifty tools to fix stuff like that.

though booting into dos and using the cd as just a tool set, that is win95 trickery right there..

My Computer got messed up with a power surge

Reply #13 – February 18, 2006, 09:51:51 AM

You guys are great. I'm going to go try that now! I'll let you know how it works out.