October 10, 2008, it was a bad morning. Since 04:30 in the morning local time the rain pours down heavily and there are constant blast of lightening.

However since I know that my computer and radios are switched off I feel confident that nothing would happen, right?

Wrong, my ups are still on standby and connected to the mains supply.

After the rain stopped, as usual I try to connect to the internet but then the computer did not want to be switched on while the monitor standby led flashes meaning that something must have gone worng with my computer.

I try to investigate and snif arround and I smell silicon burnt!! Bad sign.

When I look further inside the case I found that the smell comes from the power supply. My guess is correct, the power supply was damaged (the switching transistors are burnt along with several diodes). I wonder why it happened since the ups are sound functioning.

Further investiagations lead me to a damaged motherboard, but luckly the hard disk and the DDR memory are still functioning well so no data were gone.

Lesson learned:

  1. Never leave your mains supply connected after you finish using your computer. Use a double switch to disconnect the mains, don’t think that spikes can only goes through the hot cable.
  2. Always disconnect your telephone line (including your DSL connection) when there are lightening strikes. That is another way the spikes enter your sensitive electornic equipments.
  3. Do not trust your spike prevention circuits/device. I use a reputable APC UPS with an anti spike prevention circuit but it did not help (at least in my case). Better be save rather than regret.
  4. Check your electrical ground system, make one if it is not available. Most of the house build in this country did not follow the rules in electrical installation (to save the contractor’s money).

Even though you never experience what I have been through I urge you to learn from what happened to me, and I hope this will be the last for me.

To our authorities: Regulations are made to save expenses and please do not think that what happened to others are completely isolated, we live in a connected world, what happened to others somehow will have an impact on us sooner or later.