Hey everyone, nice to be here, etc., etc. You know the drill. I was wondering if any of you guys could help me on the account of my machine.
This last Thursday, we had a nasty rainstorm in the midwest, and my room (in the basement, yeah yeah, stereotypical, I know) flooded. I have an egress window, on the one end of my room, and on the other, my door and computer. Now when I say flooded, this isn't to say I had several feet of water. If that were the case, I'd have pitched my computer first thing in the morning, because it would be virtually useless. The most I ever had, at one point, was about an inch of water above the carpet.
My floor is angled in such a way that the water pools in my closet, and along the eastern wall, whereas my window is on the southern wall. My computer is also nearest to the eastern wall, so when I realized that I couldn't contain the water flow with our carpet cleaner (This is not my first foray into flooding), I immediately started removing items from the floor. My machine was one of the first things, as it's probably the most valuable thing in my room. The water line had reached my desk area, however it not actually reached my computer yet, although as I recall, it was damned close. While I was disconnecting it (I did power down everything first, trust me), I received a mild electrical shock from the monitor cable adapter, as I still have an older CRT monitor. I knew this is never a good sign, especially when water was involved, so I redoubled my efforts, and got it the **** out of there. What I had not yet realized, was that everything was powered down.
Now my setup works like this: my monitor is up on my desk, my machine sits on the floor, my UPS sits on the raised platform that your machine is supposed to sit on, and other various components are spread out on my desk and on top of my machine.
Now that my room is ready for habitation again, I went to reinstate my poor displaced computer to its rightful position of power (i.e. my UPS), and whilst plugging in my monitor to the adapter set in the video card slot, I received another minor shock. Obviously not deadly, but painful nonetheless. I checked everything again, just to make sure that I hadn't turned anything on by accident, but alas, nothing was turned on, except for my UPS.
I soon realized that this was the same thing that happened when I removed my case several days ago, so I quickly unplugged everything and went to work trying to figure out what went wrong. There appears to be nothing wrong with the case itself, putting it up on wood blocks, it still produces a minor shock, but only when the video-in cable is attached. Stranger still, it's only a problem when the monitor power is plugged in. The case can be unplugged, but as long as the monitor power cable is plugged in, and the video-in cable is attached to the video card, it produces about 14-16v shock.
The same thing happens when I switch monitors, and the monitor power cable. It still produces an electric shock. What I'm trying to determine is if my machine is at fault because of the flood, or if this is an unrelated issue that occurred as a result of my rough handling, or if it's completely unrelated to the night's events at all. I've discussed this with my father, and he thinks the likely explanation is that the video card is creating feedback, and shooting it through the adapter connected to the video card, which electrifies the case.
I run an nVidia 6600GT XFX card (AGP), with a 2.3 ghz P4 processor. 1 GB of RAM, etc.
I'd like to know if you guys can deduce a different problem, or other ways to find out. I'd rather not whip out a lot of money on a new video card if I can avoid it, or an entire machine, if that's the case.
This last Thursday, we had a nasty rainstorm in the midwest, and my room (in the basement, yeah yeah, stereotypical, I know) flooded. I have an egress window, on the one end of my room, and on the other, my door and computer. Now when I say flooded, this isn't to say I had several feet of water. If that were the case, I'd have pitched my computer first thing in the morning, because it would be virtually useless. The most I ever had, at one point, was about an inch of water above the carpet.
My floor is angled in such a way that the water pools in my closet, and along the eastern wall, whereas my window is on the southern wall. My computer is also nearest to the eastern wall, so when I realized that I couldn't contain the water flow with our carpet cleaner (This is not my first foray into flooding), I immediately started removing items from the floor. My machine was one of the first things, as it's probably the most valuable thing in my room. The water line had reached my desk area, however it not actually reached my computer yet, although as I recall, it was damned close. While I was disconnecting it (I did power down everything first, trust me), I received a mild electrical shock from the monitor cable adapter, as I still have an older CRT monitor. I knew this is never a good sign, especially when water was involved, so I redoubled my efforts, and got it the **** out of there. What I had not yet realized, was that everything was powered down.
Now my setup works like this: my monitor is up on my desk, my machine sits on the floor, my UPS sits on the raised platform that your machine is supposed to sit on, and other various components are spread out on my desk and on top of my machine.
Now that my room is ready for habitation again, I went to reinstate my poor displaced computer to its rightful position of power (i.e. my UPS), and whilst plugging in my monitor to the adapter set in the video card slot, I received another minor shock. Obviously not deadly, but painful nonetheless. I checked everything again, just to make sure that I hadn't turned anything on by accident, but alas, nothing was turned on, except for my UPS.
I soon realized that this was the same thing that happened when I removed my case several days ago, so I quickly unplugged everything and went to work trying to figure out what went wrong. There appears to be nothing wrong with the case itself, putting it up on wood blocks, it still produces a minor shock, but only when the video-in cable is attached. Stranger still, it's only a problem when the monitor power is plugged in. The case can be unplugged, but as long as the monitor power cable is plugged in, and the video-in cable is attached to the video card, it produces about 14-16v shock.
The same thing happens when I switch monitors, and the monitor power cable. It still produces an electric shock. What I'm trying to determine is if my machine is at fault because of the flood, or if this is an unrelated issue that occurred as a result of my rough handling, or if it's completely unrelated to the night's events at all. I've discussed this with my father, and he thinks the likely explanation is that the video card is creating feedback, and shooting it through the adapter connected to the video card, which electrifies the case.
I run an nVidia 6600GT XFX card (AGP), with a 2.3 ghz P4 processor. 1 GB of RAM, etc.
I'd like to know if you guys can deduce a different problem, or other ways to find out. I'd rather not whip out a lot of money on a new video card if I can avoid it, or an entire machine, if that's the case.