Did lightning strike my computer?

[killians45]

it is COMPLETELY possible to go over a breaker. Its called arc. If the surge is enough, it can and WILL jump over the breaker and zap away (or, as stated above, it will "arc"). Oh, and yes I do have electrical training. You get a big of enough spike and it will do some damage.

 

[jolancer]

killian your right. (im nota electricain, but was taught a couple things) iv heard about arcing though, id imagine that would be realy realy rare.. and when it does happen, doesnt it usually destroy wiring and fry stuff cause of the amount of energy needed to creat an arc in the first place?

 

[killians45]

Oh, its real rare. Think about it like this, though. Most people who get electrical damage are not from huge voltage spikes like a direct hit from a storm, but from small and constant spikes hitting the computer that after awhile will start to render damage and then eventually you get hardware failure. Most people think this to be a one time voltage spike, and actually its just small spikes overtime causing damage. On rare cases a direct hit will jump any surge protection (even heavy duty house). Usually its a HUGE surge, blows the house fuse, burns the wiring, will still be powerful enough to blow any little fuse connected to a surge strip, blow it and blow ruin the computer. Anyhow, the best protection is really to just unplug the thing. Like I said, its possible but the real danger is prolonged exposure to small spikes. So, unplug it for the big ones, and for the small spikes use a line conditioner.

 

[killians45]

Actually, learned most of my electonics in the AirForce working on Nukes Then went to school for network engineering, and also do a little programing on the side, also did desktop support (that sucked).

 

[welsh]

this is probally a bit late to say, but if any one heard of hurricane jaune? well if u did i was here it hid dead on and lost power for a day and a bit. when we got power back on i turned the computer on and then a surge hit and fried the power supply was a hp computer to, cost like a couple of hundred bucks to replace.

 

[compy]

well i may be an idiot for this post but since it's with topic i'll just ask these questions i've been wanting to ask. first of all, how does a surge protector work, what's the point. are there like diff kinds and stuff? also wouldn't a sure protector pick up those small jolts? and what good is that conductor wire and what's it for, like what does it plug into and how does it work? sorry for all the questions but this is the only place for me to learn and i love learning this stuff. thanks for any future help!