lightbulb zapped my computer? Need help

Alright here is the scenerio. I flip my light switch on this morning. I hear a pop coming from my overhead light. Then my computer and alarm clock go off. So somehow the light bulb blew and caused the breaker to flip. I replaced the bulb and flipped the breaker. So all is good. I come back from class turn my computer on and I get no monitor, no usb mouse, and no keyboard. Apparently a surge moved from my light down the wall to the reseptacle through my surge protector and zapped my computer. I also do not hear my hard drive doing anything when I reboot. What is the most logical components that were fried? The cpu fan runs, the PSU runs obviously, the fan on the vid card runs, also the light on the onboard lan is on. I took out everything except the essentials to see if I could get it to post and I got nothing. My other rig is at home so I can't test the components very easily right now. I am going to check the vid card as soon as I can. If that works I am guessing that just the mobo is fryed. Its wierd though because it turns on and all the fans run on everything. What do you guys think?

ok I tested the video card and it works fine and I can hear my HD click when I reboot. So it seems to just be the mobo.

Try reseating the memory. It's better not to ask but for some reason that has helped me and it takes like no time so.............. other than that. It is possible that the bulp shorting out caused a surge..........do you have your computer on a surge protector? Guessing not but that might be a good investment. Might as well keep it from happening again.

im thinking it might be your psu
correct me if im wrong but dont some psu cut off power to important components when a surge comes through to protect them, it kills the psu but it saves your components

When you get it all sorted out, Replace your surge protector as well. it didn't work that last time. there must have been a few surges and the surge protectors only work a while before they become just a power strip. It seems that the protection circuitry in them can wear out after a while.

I hadn't heard of that in a psu. I'd say though, that since most psu's rails can be adjusted enough to kill a computer it's possible that it allows enough current through to kill the motherboard.

I'd check to see if you've blown one of the motherboard's fuses.

Both my AOpen and my Asus boards have a small square dark green chip on the top right of the board that is a surface mount fuse, and it's replaceable with some soldering skill. There's 3 or 4 scattered about.
My AOpen one says P 110 on it, and my Asus one says P 160 on it, the first one's right behind the keyboard/mouse plug.
Check them with a multimeter for ohms resistence (it should read O ).

If it reads much higher, or infinite, call them to see if they wanna RMA it for repair or if you're skilled, if they'd send another fuse.

It's something free to check...

Sometehing else to try ( if you haven't already), is to simply flip the switch on your PS, or unplug it for a few min and re plug it in. I've had issues with mine a time or two before and that fixed it..

Simple.. but who knows...


Lee

i took everything apart including the cmos battery. then put everything back together. amazingly it posted. the only thing that got fried was the sound card. SB live 5.1. no big deal. i am going to replace my surge protector, its pretty old. thanks for all the help.

Groovy!
I don't even use my SBLive anymore. The onboard is surprisingly good these days, and my speakers aren't top shelf anyway.

yea i have mine running through on board now. thing is mine supports 5.1 but you have to have the spidf or whatever it is. So I am gonna look around for one of those.

Oh BTW, I did a little reading, and some of those are actually circuit breakers. (resettable fuses in Engrish).
Dunno which one protects what, but it's something I hadn't known about before last week...interesting.