Lightning causing possible issues?

[ldshaul01]

Hey guys, I sold my old computer to my friend and he's running into a few issues...

tonight he started messaging me saying that he got a new router and his computer started telling him that the network adapter could not be found...

He later came to tell me that lightning hit and his cable box and router were fried. His computer still runs and everthing but the adapter is working fine. Is it possible that a power surge hit that part of the mobo and fried the adapter itself? When he tries to instal a new RealTEK LAN driver and he double clicks on the startup.exe file nothing happens at all.

Any ideas?

edit: this issue came up the moment they got a new router and started using it tonight.

 

[rhysiam]

It's hard to rule out anything with a lightning strike. It sounds like the modem got fried and passed the spike to the router which in turn got fried. I'm guessing the computer was connected with an ethernet cable to the router when it was hit? If that's the case it's entirely possible that the router passed the spike to the network adapter on the motherboard which fried it too.

A (old) PCI slot and $10 is all you need for a gigabit network adapter, so if everything else on the computer seems to have survived, it's worth giving one of those a shot: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833704011

 

[ldshaul01]

It's hard to rule out anything with a lightning strike. It sounds like the modem got fried and passed the spike to the router which in turn got fried. I'm guessing the computer was connected with an ethernet cable to the router when it was hit? If that's the case it's entirely possible that the router passed the spike to the network adapter on the motherboard which fried it too.

A (old) PCI slot and $10 is all you need for a gigabit network adapter, so if everything else on the computer seems to have survived, it's worth giving one of those a shot: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833704011

Im gonna take a look at it tomorrow in person. The weird thing i cant find a work around for is the fact that when he tries to start the startup.exe file, nothing happens at all. Even if he tries to run it as admin. It asks for permission then nothing. When he tried to start in safe mode his computer freaked and started in repair mode.

 

[rhysiam]

Im gonna take a look at it tomorrow in person. The weird thing i cant find a work around for is the fact that when he tries to start the startup.exe file, nothing happens at all. Even if he tries to run it as admin. It asks for permission then nothing. When he tried to start in safe mode his computer freaked and started in repair mode.

That is strange I agree. If the adapter is fried and has effectively disappeared from the system, it's possible that the drivers just don't run if they don't detect compatible hardware - though you'd expect an error message at least. I don't know.

Your last sentence is the most concerning. Two things... 1) I'm guessing his computer was attached with a cable (ethernet cable I'm guessing) to a component (his router) which got fried by lightening strike and 2) assuming his computer was connected to the power when the lighting hit... unfortunately anything could have been affected.

I'd forget about the network card for a second and just do some stability testing to see whether the system is behaving properly.

When you're trying to troubleshoot the first question to ask is "what changed"... If the computer was working when you sold it to him, and then, after the lighting strike, is now not... the most likely explanation is that something (or possible several components) got damaged as a result of the strike.

 

[ldshaul01]

Im gonna take a look at it tomorrow in person. The weird thing i cant find a work around for is the fact that when he tries to start the startup.exe file, nothing happens at all. Even if he tries to run it as admin. It asks for permission then nothing. When he tried to start in safe mode his computer freaked and started in repair mode.

That is strange I agree. If the adapter is fried and has effectively disappeared from the system, it's possible that the drivers just don't run if they don't detect compatible hardware - though you'd expect an error message at least. I don't know.

Your last sentence is the most concerning. Two things... 1) I'm guessing his computer was attached with a cable (ethernet cable I'm guessing) to a component (his router) which got fried by lightening strike and 2) assuming his computer was connected to the power when the lighting hit... unfortunately anything could have been affected.

I'd forget about the network card for a second and just do some stability testing to see whether the system is behaving properly.

When you're trying to troubleshoot the first question to ask is "what changed"... If the computer was working when you sold it to him, and then, after the lighting strike, is now not... the most likely explanation is that something (or possible several components) got damaged as a result of the strike.

What kind of tests would you recommend? I've never run into this kind of problem before so I have no idea...

 

[rhysiam]

Prime95 for CPU, memtest for system RAM, unigine heaven benchmark for graphics, run a (Windows) an error check the HDDs.

If everything (apart from the network) seems fine it's probably a bit overkill to run hours and hours of tests like that, but if you're getting other strange symptoms, or system instability, it's the best place to start.