How to avoid Fry Ups (PC types)

Hi People

Have any of you experience PC damage by lightning or power surge?

It can be quite a shock (no pun intended here).

I have witnessed, first and second hand excess power damage to computers.

In one situation, lightning struck the local power supply to the houses and one unfortunate person had their motherboard, memory, powersupply and dvd recorder fried. How did we know, well the cooked and cracked chips on the various boards gave it away, visually, but the smell was also a dead (pun intended) giveaway.

Another situation arose when a CRT monitor (tv tube type) blew up for no reason, due possibly to an internal fault or faulty component (this had been left on over a lunch break unattended, fortunately no fire ensued)

So how can we prevent most of these situations arising?

If you are going away for a time, then unplug your computer, monitor, printer and ROUTER (telephone and cable modems are subject to lightning strikes also)

While at home, or in the office, use either an anti-surge power bar/strip or even better get hold of an UPS (uninterrutible power supply), this has an added advantage, of preventing the computer locking itself up or cutting the power to the computer during 'brownouts' (low power outages) or short term 'blackouts' of less than a couple of minutes. If you happen to be using your computer (desktop / tower) at the time of a blackout that has a lengthy duration, then it allows you sufficient time to save your work and close down the system normally.

One word of advice, do not connect non essential peripherals to the UPS as they have a finite power supply in the event of a blackout, so have a printer or scanner draw power from the unit will only serve to shorten the length of time you have to close down the computer normally.

Use only the system unit (case containing the processor/motherboard/memory and internal harddrive), monitor and possibly an external hard drive if absolutely necessary for external backup - watch the power requirements here, on a UPS unit and put the remaining power using perpherals on an antisurge bar for safe keeping.


That's it until next time people










We now have a FREE SPYWARE REPORT available, yours to keep and share if you wish. Fill in your details below and get yours now

eMail address:
First Name:

'For Exceptional Service on Computer Repair visit Green Dragon Solutions'