My computer had power surge, with a surge protector and now it won't start.?

Question

I am in a rental, the house may not be properly grounded. What can I do short of wiping the computer?

Answer 1

Try a new power supply. You can not start it to wipe it.
Wiping the computer will not work.

Get a Battery Backup while you are at it. It will act as a line conditioner. It will give you clean steady power instead of just trying to protect you from surges.

Answer 2

If nothing happens when you push the power button on the tower, try unplugging your power supply from the wall for about a minute or two and then plug it back on. This will reset the power supply.

If you do get power when you turn on your computer, ie, the fans and the lights come on but there is no POST (beep), then you could have damaged either the mother board, the ram, or the hard drive. If the fans come on, then the board is probably ok. If you can get to the "boot" screen, but the system can't go on from there then it is probably a hard drive problem. If you are getting an error message, (no ntldr) or something like that you could try running the Windows Repair Console. To do that, read the following.


USING THE WINDOWS REPAIR CONSOLE

Put your XP disk into your CD drive and restart your system. This will start the XP installation process. When you come to the screen that asks if you want to install XP or if you would like to “Repair” XP, choose Repair. This will open the repair console command prompt. At the prompt, type: chkdsk /r. (There is a space between the k and the /. Now hit “Enter”. The repair should now start. Allow it to run until it stops. This can take some time, so be patient.

If all goes well, XP will replace any and all missing operating system files.

Answer 3

Not all power surges work, it depends on the quality and speed/power of the surge. If your computer will not come on it's a great chance that the power serge killed it.
But some forgettable things to check are

1) Did you remember to reset the surge protector after the surge? Surge protectors work by breakng the circut and cutting off power to the computer before the surge can reach it. And when that happens you must reset the surge protector to restore power to your computer. It usually involves flicking the switch, but others might be different.

2)Is the surge protector damaged? Try plugging your computer directly into the wall to see if it is the computer, or surge protector that will not work. If the computer comes on, see if the surge protector has been reset, or buy a new one if it is indeed damaged.

If it is the computer that wont come on, then take it to a local radio shack or computer repair store and they should be able to do something about it.

Answer 4

Hi,
Most likely your power supply is burned out if you are lucky. They don't cost much. Get it to a repair shop and have it checke out.
Good luck!

Answer 5

Take it to the Nerd Herd.