Network card fried?

Scroll down to "QUESTION" if you wish to skip the story

Well, as many of you may have seen on the news (in the US anyway), Louisville, Kentucky was hit by some massive storms on August 4th.

I was unlucky enough to be on the campus at the University of Louisville, where I live in a dorm. During the rain and thunder, I was surfing the web and watching a little TV to pass the time due to canceled classes.

All of a sudden there was a bright flash, and a loud crack and boom. I had later been informed that the building was hit by that particular bolt of lightning.

At the same time as the flash, my laptop completely froze, forcing me to hard reboot. Nothing else in the room was affected. Lights didn't flicker once, TV never skipped a beat. My electronics are all plugged into a quality surge protector; this and the fact that we still had power and cable, I knew there wasn't a power surge.

However, the internet was knocked out for the whole building. Come to find out today, my laptop no longer recognizes when an ethernet cable is plugged into the port, thus preventing me from connecting to any LAN; home, on campus or otherwise.

QUESTION

This leads me to the question: Is it possible for there to be an electrical surge carried over an ethernet cable that is strong enough to fry/disable an internal network card?

In case you're wondering, I'm currently connected via wireless. Specs are in my sig (Dell E4300).

Thanks,
Matt

 

It is the voltage, not the current, which will zap the electronics, and this wouldn't need to be a very big voltage to kill something which is designed for a very low voltage.

This could have come in to the network through any of the connected equipment. One of my surge suppressors actually has a pair of network ports on it in order to protect against spikes from that source.

John

 

Yeah, that's basically what a Prof. of mine said.

Consider this lesson learned. I will forever have surge protectors for internet cables.

 

Or change to wireless whenever a thunderstorm is around.

Telephone lines plugged into modem ports used to be the main source of lightning damage.

John

 

So..that should be covered under warrenty right?

 

I hope so. I'll be giving Dell a call on Tuesday once the Summer Term is over.

 

I suppose you could just say that it suddenly died without warning. You went out to grab a bite to eat (in a thunderstorm or not), and it just died.

 

Yeah. I'm not going to give the specifics. Just that it no longer works.

Think they'll want to send a tech, or will I get a replacement or...?

(I'd rather NOT deal with the tech. I'm willing to wait for a replacement.)

 

Well, I decided to go ahead and contact Dell.

While they won't send me an entire replacement, they are sending me a motherboard to replace in my system. I went ahead and asked for a new keyboard to hopefully lessen the flex.

I opted to replace the motherboard myself, as I know of some terrible experiences with on-site techs (Cin' comes to mind).

I've built computers and consider myself knowledgeable enough to handle the task. Despite this, I've not much experience replacing whole motherboards in laptops.

So, any advice?

 

If you haven't done so already, study the Service Manual that is on the Dell website. There will be a step-by-step guide to replacing the motherboard.

And remember to put a soft cloth on the table before you put your upside notebook onto it. Otherwise you may acquire some unwanted scratches.

John