Ack can power failure damage a PC through a UPS?

[JavaMomma]

Last night a thunderstorm knocked out the power for a few hours. My UPS kept my PC running and powered down with no problems.

Today i powered my machine on:
Got hard disk failure message, power down / restart again
Got hard disk failure message, entered the BIOS it was like no hard disk was connected, powered down
Opened up the case checked connections, restarted, entered the BIOS and it saw my hard disk was there, rebooted again.
then got a message saying my CPU appeared to be damaged, and to check SoftMenu settings. Powered down again - Restarted
this time i got into windows with no problems (currently backing things up now, and writting this post).

Anyone seen somthing like this? i have a APC battery backup running a Thunderbird, Abit board, Western Digital 100BB, and a really cheap powersupply. I'm afraid to power down again, incase i dont get back in.

 

[Woody419]

Lightning can get through anything, it can hit a tree, boil the sap in less than a nano-second and explode it. Your lil' ol' UPS might slow it down a little. Lightning usually gets a computer through the modem or cable line, or it can go through the printer and back up to the computer through the parallel or USB cable. I have read the metal oxide varistors inside a surge protector and UPS get less effective over time, but have not read any definative info on that topic yet.

 

[MWink]

I'm not convinced it went through the UPS. APC UPS's are designed to self destruct before they allow a spike through. What model APC UPS is it? You said it was powering your computer off battery before the problems started. It's possible that the power it put out was not clean enough for your "really cheap power supply". If it's less than a Smart-UPS they don't put out pure sine wave which does not always agree with all electronics.

The other possibility is you got hit by a "backdoor surge". Do you have ANYTHING connected to your computer that does not go through a high end surge protector (phone, coax, ethernet, parallel, serial, VGA, USB, etc.)? Remember, surges can come in through any wire.

BTW, I would guess your power supply or mother board is fried. I recommend you take the computer totally apart and look over every card for burn marks (especially the modem, NIC, etc.).

 

[JavaMomma]

Still havnt powered down, but i am still up and running.

I guess i could have got a "backdoor surge" possibly through my cable modem? which seems to be still working.

I think i might get a new power supply anyways, I have been thinking about getting one for a while. 250 Watt P/S for an athlon

Thanks for the suggestions