Lightning damage to Ethernet connection

[TreeProg]

Lightning struck a tree that is a few feet from my house. Afterward, my computer couldn't connect to the internet. The connection ran from the cable modem to a router, then to the PC through an Ethernet cable. I removed the router from the line and went straight from the modem to the PC, and the modem wouldn't acknowledge the connection, but it did when again connecting to the router. Also, the light adjacent to the Ethernet port on the motherboard is perpetually lit showing a connection despite nothing being plugged into it. I feel that I can conclude that it is the motherboard that is damaged, but the Ethernet connection seems to be the only thing not functioning correctly.

Are there any recommendations on tests I should put the motherboard (and other parts) through to check for further damage?

Side question unrelated to PCs: The lightning also ran in on the subwoofer for my home theater, which began pulsing with squeaks and low frequencies every 2 seconds or so. Does anyone have any ideas on what I could do about that or know where I can ask about it?

 

[Khyron85]

Well if the only damage is to the ethernet port you might be able to just buy a PCI ethernet card for a cheap fix. As far as you current setup goes can you ping your router's default gateway once you reconnected it?

 

[TreeProg]

Well if the only damage is to the ethernet port you might be able to just buy a PCI ethernet card for a cheap fix. As far as you current setup goes can you ping your router's default gateway once you reconnected it?

Thanks for your reply.

I've put a wireless network card from another PC in as a temporary solution, and yes I can ping the router with it, but my initial connection was just bypassing the router with a direct cable connection, so I'm not sure of the purpose of pinging it, but I'm an absolute idiot when it comes to networking.

My main concern is testing the computer for further damage so that I can report it to my insurance provider should there be any. Do you have any recommendations?

 

[Khyron85]

What I just like to ping stuff to verify network connectivity. Just seeing if you can load a website isn't really good enough. You could have a fine connection to your router but maybe the dns server is wrong. What I would do is connect the cable to the router and see if you get a connection. Pull up a dos prompt and type ipconfig. You should get auto assigned an IP address in the range of 192.168.x.x. Look for your default gateway it will probably be 192.168.1.1 or something similar. Type ping 192.168.1.1 or whatever it is. If that works and you can get online you have no problems. If you are seeing a 168 .254.x.x address then not so much. You could also try going into device manager, removing the network card, reboot, and let your computer automatically reinstall the drivers.

 

[Khyron85]

Oh as far as testing goes if you arent' showing any symptoms of damage I wouldn't worry about . If you want you can run prime95 on your cpu and memtest86 on your ram. Theres loads of diagnostic software for hard drives as well.

 

[TreeProg]

When I disable the wireless card and try to ping the router with my old direct, wired setup, it draws a blank when I use the ipconfig command.

Also, when I tried to go into the device manager to remove the old network driver, I found that it was no longer listed. So I guess I can't remove it to try to reinstall it. Should I just try to download the drivers anyway? I was using a Killer E2205 by the way, which is integrated with the motherboard. It was always listed under Network Adaptors, and is now absent.

 

[Khyron85]

If it's part of the motherboard and not showing up even after a reboot its probably toast. You can't remove it. You can check your bios setup to make sure it's not disabled there but it's not going to just disable itself. Just get a cheap PCIe network adapter if you want to use a cable.

 

[TreeProg]

Thanks for your help. I'm running some stress tests now to make sure nothing else shows up.