I think Tom's evaluation is accurate. Based on my experience in dealing with
lightning victim PCs, they are trouble with a capital T.

Lessons learned:  "PC, After a lightning Strike"
Although visually the components inside the CPU case may appear to be in
good condition, they're not.
Although your wires and ribbon cables appear to display that clean
shinny-new-good condition look, they're not.
Although the whinning noise you hear from your harddrive seems to tell you
it's doing 7200 RPM, it's not.
Although your ATX P/S Tester indicates all 7 green LEDs are ON meaning
circuit continuities are good, they're not.
Although that fluctuating differing noise frequency coming off your CPU fan
seems to happen only when you turn your head away from the CPU, it's not.
Although that brightly lit green LED next to your Chipset sems to tell you
that your mobo is healthy, run to a Chinese restaurant and grab yourself a
fortune cookie.
If you think your screen froze and hungs because you were multi-tasking or
your game's graphics demand used up your resources, get an X-Box or a PS-2
from Wal-Mart..
If you believe that the screen resolution switched to 800x600 from 1280x768
after the lightning strike and could be fixed by reloading your AGP card
driver, cross your fingers.
If you believe that the fatal errors, critical errors and illegal function
errors that all of a sudden appear on your screen a week after you pick up
your computer from the shop, are caused by an incompetent PC Tech, it's not!
(why didn't you take your PC to an automotive repair shop instead?)
If those bright flashing lights from your windows followed by the sound of a
body slam the wrestlers make on TV, wakes you up in the middle of the night
and you remembered your PC is on 24/7 and you just installed an el cheapo
brand surge protector you picked up from a dollar store, quick, get on your
knees and pray as hard as you can!

I probably could list a dozen more but again, just my own experience.  I
believe that the over-voltage applied to a System during an electrical storm
creates minute damages to the circuitry (especially printed circuits),
termination points, jumpers, etc., in most components.  I think the experts
will agree with me that the mobo is the most vulnerable part of a System and
Modem cards, sad to say, are the 'bridge to destruction' during a lightning
strike.

Some are pretty obvious and severe but most PCs do not exhibit problems
until after few days or weeks of use.  The damage caused by a lightning
strike is like a cancer.  It gradually deteriorates your PC's health, it
gets worst by time until it reaches its 'thy kingdom come'.  If it happens
to me, I would trade the headaches, aggravations and frustrations for a new
computer.

Emie DelRosario

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom Turak" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2003 6:59 PM
Subject: Re: [PCBUILD] Four beeps on POST


> IF it still fails at this point, the answer is either the motherboard or
the
> cpu.  Because of the age of your HP, you are best served by replacing the
> case, motherboard, and cpu as a unit at the least, and reusing your HP
disk,
> cd, keyboard and mouse, or buying a new computer.
> Tom Turak
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: George W Hurless [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Monday, December 08, 2003 1:19 PM
>
> On an HP Pavilion PII 6470Z, 400MH cpu, after a lightening strike crash it
> gives
> four beeps on POST then shuts down.
> A web site indicated that this was " System timer failure ".
> Would this indicate a bad ( fried ) motherboard?

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