It sounds to me like your power supply is okay. You should always have the
power cord plugged into the wall when working inside the PC case, the ground
prong on the power cord provides ground to keep you from getting the little
tingle.....

If your computer will post, but not boot into the OS, go into setup and see
if your hard drive is detected before you go buying a power supply.  If your
hard drive is shot, there's no point.

Also, try pulling all of your cards (modem, NIC, sound cards, etc,.)
out, and boot the computer.  If it will post, then shutdown and add another
card back into the system and boot again.  It may be that one of the cards
is fried and is preventing the computer from booting.  Reinstalling each
card and seeing if the computer will reboot will tell you which card is
malfunctioning.

Usually when I have customers who have had their systems damaged in an
electrical storm, I check the diodes inside the monitor.  There is a full
wave rectifier (four diodes aligned side by side) and usually one of those
diodes will blow before the power supply.  Sometimes there is a fuse in
there too.  You can find the diodes and any fuse cases on the circuit card
right where the power cord comes into the monitor.

You can desolder any diodes that look frazzled and take them to your nearest
Radio Shack or other electronics parts retailer and they should have
replacements for cheap, same goes for the fuse.

Good luck!

----- Original Message -----
From: "Louis Smogor" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, July 24, 2002 8:29 AM
Subject: Case Electrified, what does it mean?


> Hi -
>
> Returned from a journey to hear that one computer and monitor at home no
> longer work. Supposition is that an electrical storm did them in.
>
> The computer won't boot, but when all peripherals are disconnecetd, it
will
> run its POST OK. In the course of determining this, we discovered that the
> case is not grounded; one gets a slight tingle from touching it (power
> supply has no on/off switch).
>
> Clearly this is not right. All further investigations have been put off
> since fiddling with components while not grounded cannot be a good thing.
> I can externally ground the case, of course, but that seems like cheating.
>
> Anyone have an idea about what could have caused this? It hardly seems
> likely that lightning could have done it. Any other way to proceed than to
> get a new powersupply (old computer, maybe not worth the effort).
>
> Suggestions/explanations will be gratefully received.
>
> Lou Smogor
>
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