Posted on 06/20/2011 6:49:37 PM PDT by sushiman
Last night , during a distant thunder and lightning storm , we either lost power for a split second ( all lights in my room were off ) , or there was a minor surge of power . What happened was the computer shut down ( I was watching a DVD ) - black screen and no audio , but the on/off switch was still green , and the fans were spinning at supersonic speed - meaning the PC was still on ! The only way I could get the computer back on fully was to re-boot . Has anyone heard of this sort of thing happening ? It know it doesn't make sense but this is what happened . Any thoughts , comments appreciated .
I would go for the UPS. They're not that expensive.
Surge protectors are funny things. They mostly work by shunting power spikes to ground. So now the spike is on your ground wire. Not really a good thing.
Look into a surge suppressor to cover your entire house. They’re cheap enough (considering the possible/likely) damage. Probably still under $100.
It’s the size of a circuit breaker and is installed in the circuit breaker box.
Talk to someone at an electrical supply company about them.
Once you’ve had a power surge, replace your surge protectors. They don’t work well once they’ve stopped a big power surge.
Actually, we have been having short power outages outside Houston. Sometimes I have to reboot to reconnect to the Internet and sometimes not. Twice, I had to remove the battery and unplug the computer to get it to reboot. Pain in the you know what!
My HP - just a year old - never shut down completely . As I said , the on/off switch was still green , and the fans were running super fast for some reason . Hence , my reboot .
If power is lost, a function inside a PSU must tell the power controller. Power controller then stops the CPU. And powers off PSU. Your machine did not. For example, if the supply was purchased only using dollar and watts, then the function that informs a power controller may be defective or not even exist. They are selling that supply to computer assemblers who never learned how a computer works.
Once power returned less than a second later, power controller could not restart (reboot) the CPU. So a CPU could not throttle down fans; could not execute.
Your failure can be explained by above or by other reasons. But everyone implies hardware defective when purchased.
Brownouts and blackouts are not surges. Many only know from the junk science provided by advertising. Therefore many assume a blackout is also a surge. A near zero voltage also a massive voltage? Never was. But advertising is sufficient to be an expert.
Same applies to the UPS. It does not protect from surges. Does not even claim to protect from surges. See its specification numbers. But a UPS is recommended for surge protection only because power went off.
Brownouts can be harmful to motorized appliances - as one demonstrated. Same brownouts are ideal power to all electronics. Or electronics do a simple and normal power off. But if your power supply fails to inform its power controller of that brownout, then your computer stops working. And will not be rebooted by the controller when power is restored.
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