Karma?

Yesterday I was at a clients house cleaning up some viruses. He asked if I was very busy doing this sort of thing and I said not as busy as I'd like to be. He said "there's always those occassional electrical storms that knock out some computers" and I said "yeah I could hope for those".
Last night we had one of those storms and it took out our phone line, modem, router, and hopefully only the network interface on wifes computer. I had a spare modem and router so as soon as the phone line was back I got internet back. My wifes comp is working but her comp doesn't detect the network so I'll get a NIC monday and see if it helps.
Talk about putting the bad luck on yourself!

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Plantwiz

earweed wrote: »

Yesterday I was at a clients house cleaning up some viruses. He asked if I was very busy doing this sort of thing and I said not as busy as I'd like to be. He said "there's always those occassional electrical storms that knock out some computers" and I said "yeah I could hope for those".
Last night we had one of those storms and it took out our phone line, modem, router, and hopefully only the network interface on wifes computer. I had a spare modem and router so as soon as the phone line was back I got internet back. My wifes comp is working but her comp doesn't detect the network so I'll get a NIC monday and see if it helps.
Talk about putting the bad luck on yourself!

No UPS?

I have them and depending on the weather, I'll still unplug things...I can't stand having to fix my spouse's PC any longer. But it's worse having him offline...so then I break down and fix it for him.

I have been leaving my gateway plugged in though...last storm I tried to save it, and when I powered it back on, my ISP 'lost' the MAC address and I had to sit on the phone with them for 45 minutes trying to convince them I didn't change it...it was still the crappy one they provided and I was trying to save it from the surges that we had (and we did, so I'm glad I uplugged things).

I was then told (after the 're-added' my MAC to their list) that if the gateway is unplugged, it can be lost off their list. I asked why that happened in only 3 hours time? They didn't have an answer, so now I leave only that piece plugged in during a storm to 'test' the UPS

Good luck on getting up an running in a timely manner!

earweed

All pc's up but the wifes' are back up. The phone comapany had to repair the line down the road from me as lightning had taken out the line. I had everything unplugged except for the modem, router, and my wifes comp>router cord. Last night was definitely bad for me.lol

forkvoid

We have a client in southern Georgia... home of the electrical storm, it seems. All summer, pretty much every month, it knocks out their backbone switch and they have to buy another(a Catalyst 2960, so not exactly cheap). Only after the second time did they agree to buy a UPS. Of course, it knocks out NICs in that building all the time.

eMeS

I highly recommend installing one of these in your home:

Amazon.com: Intermatic IG1240RC3 Whole Home Type-2 Surge Protection Device: Home Improvement

MS

earweed

My problem came through the phone line. Have UPS on all the comps, modem, and router.
Don't know for sure if wifes NIC is gone or not. The router DHCP senses it and gave it an IP address but the comp still has an APIPA address (hasn't been configured by DHCP) but the router lists the Comp by name with an address. Maybe I'm missing something here.
It's one of those all-in-one modem/wireless router deals I had got for a client and then set them up something better so I had it laying around the house. Is it possible for the DHCP server to give out an address and have it listed in its' database without the client actually using it? I can't even ping the router from the comp and pinging loopback even fails so I figured the nic was bad. Getting a headache from this crap.

eMeS

earweed wrote: »

My problem came through the phone line. Have UPS on all the comps, modem, and router.

There are whole house surge protectors available that will also protect against surges through phone and coax lines.

MS

Zartanasaurus

eMeS wrote: »

I highly recommend installing one of these in your home:

Amazon.com: Intermatic IG1240RC3 Whole Home Type-2 Surge Protection Device: Home Improvement

MS

Awesome. We lost our living room HDTV to a lightning storm. I was going to get a surge protector for the TV, but the low cost of one of these to protect the entire house and multiple TVs/servers/routers makes it a no-brainer.

eMeS

Zartanasaurus wrote: »

Awesome. We lost our living room HDTV to a lightning storm. I was going to get a surge protector for the TV, but the low cost of one of these to protect the entire house and multiple TVs/servers/routers makes it a no-brainer.

These unfortunately don't replace point of use surge protectors. A whole house protector going to stop surges that enter through the main electrical bus, whereas what a point of use surge protector does is obvious.

Electrical surges can enter at both the main bus or at any point of use or anywhere in between. Good to have somewhat redundant forms of surge protection.

MS