Your Bios is loaded into a special place on the system board. A surge protector does not work all the time but how are you sure lightning caused the problem. If your board was fried you probably wouldn't have gotten that far in the startup. I'd place a service call. Oh and I wouldn't mention the storm :)
YWBALL,
I must concur with INTERNET2000's recommendation. At the very least you're going to have to replace the motherboard in that system and odds are good that most if not all of your expansion cards will have to be replaced as well. Given the error your system is displaying at startup it's entirely possible that every component except the power supply has been destroyed.
Johnwo's suggestion to call Dell technical support and not mention the electrical storm in an effort to get them to replace parts for you
might fly if you happen to speak to someone who is completely green. If you get someone who is even reasonably sharp and/or experienced, however, then the first thing they're going to inquire about is a thunderstorm right before this problem started to occur. This is coming from someone who builds and services computers for a living and who has seen similar or identical errors more times than I can remember. I can't recall a single instance when something like this wasn't caused by lightning strike damage.
nyguy
295 Posts
0
August 6th, 2002 22:00
all the time.
I lost a tv set and phones because of storms. Has to be unplugged
INTERNET2000
2 Intern
•
496 Posts
0
August 6th, 2002 23:00
DELL DIMENSION 8200
johnwo
4 Posts
0
August 7th, 2002 01:00
The_Namek
2 Intern
•
2.8K Posts
0
August 8th, 2002 01:00
I must concur with INTERNET2000's recommendation. At the very least you're going to have to replace the motherboard in that system and odds are good that most if not all of your expansion cards will have to be replaced as well. Given the error your system is displaying at startup it's entirely possible that every component except the power supply has been destroyed.
Johnwo's suggestion to call Dell technical support and not mention the electrical storm in an effort to get them to replace parts for you might fly if you happen to speak to someone who is completely green. If you get someone who is even reasonably sharp and/or experienced, however, then the first thing they're going to inquire about is a thunderstorm right before this problem started to occur. This is coming from someone who builds and services computers for a living and who has seen similar or identical errors more times than I can remember. I can't recall a single instance when something like this wasn't caused by lightning strike damage.