Power Surge Damage: Diagnostics??

[Legendiva]

Had one of our systems damaged by a Power Surge after the Electric came back on after a storm ( WAS on a good Surge Protector too! )
1) Power Supply shot ( my husband tested it )
Put an alternate Power Supply in.
Powers up normally to Screen which shows Memory test, lists Floppy, CDROMs, etc.
2) Only Floppy, CDROM and CDRW show up. No HD, no DVD ( which are on Primary Master, Primary Slave respectively. )
Message: BOOT FAILURE INSERT SYSTEM DISK.
HD not showing up in BIOS. BIOS is intact. PNP OS installed.
Ran Autodetect from BIOS; HD not detected.

I tested by swapping CDROM/CDRW with HD and DVD. Both CDRW and CDROM will show up on Primary Master/Primary Slave when installed there. HD and DVD do NOT show up when swapped to Secondary Master/Secondary Slave.
Tested with a different HD; known to be operative. This HD does not show up on Screen; in any configuration. Does not show up in BIOS; and will not autodetect from BIOS.

Used BOOT DISK. Start with CDROM support. Test runs and system says that HD does not have a valid FAT or FAT32 ( which it did FAT32 ). Suggests FDISK.
I try FDISK. Proceeds normally until I get the message that 'No Fixed Disk is present'. ( I tested with C,D,E,F just to see if any would get me a HD...nope. )

I am assuming that the HD and DVD are also fried.
WHY do CDROM/CDRW autodetect in any configuration, and HD ( either HD tested ) and DVD NOT autodetect in any configuration? Could this indicate MOBO damage????

Thanks, Legendiva

 

[edfair]

First guess is both fried from a 5v glitch as the power supply upchucked.

2nd guess it that the other drives on the machine were pretty heavily stressed by the overvoltage and are probably good candidates for early death.

3rd guess is that the M/B took a heavy hit also. It may continue to work but stresses like that can't make it any more reliable.

Using the stressed stuff in the future is risking everything you have stored.

Ed Fair
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[Dreamland]

I'll second Ed's thoughts - even if the mobo and/or drives can be coaxed into working again, they will always be suspect.

That said, you hadn't said explicitly if you tried the drive by itself on a known good cable/motherboard or the DVD by itself on a known good cable/motherboard. That's probably the fastest way to know for sure if either/both are fried.

Since you moved a good HD to this computer (and hopefully used a known good cable, not the zapped one), it sounds like the BIOS may not be so intact. You might try hard-clearing the CMOS by jumper/removing the battery. If that has no effect and the drives are still not recognized, then (but only as a last resort) you might try reflashing the ROM. Expect only a small chance of it even taking the flash or the flash fixing anything - this is truly only a last resort before binning it. And even if this restored the mobo's ability to recognize the drives, go with what Ed said. Don't use it for Grandpa's heart-lung machine or anything like that.