Testing for Lightning damage and power surge damage to computers

[ForensicOke]

BlankIs there anybody out there that can provide me with some advice in this regard.

We test electronic equipment for the insurance industry of new claimants that have institute a claim regarding "Lightning damage/ power surge damage" to computers and computer equipment.

Regards

 

[John Hudak]

Perhaps you should ask various insurance carriers what their criteria is
for determining lightning damage/power surge.

Lightning damage in and of itself should be pretty self evident: the
meltdown/blown apart of components in the power supply, that often
extend to other functional areas of the device. Power surges and low
intensity lightning damage are harder to determine. As far as I know,
you gather evidence to the kind of failures that would be cause by a
power surge or brown out (surge: many failed components in one area,
i.e. PS), which is somewhat particular to the type of device being
investigated.

Sorry I cant be more specific.
John

 

[Jerry G.]

BlankOn news groups, please do not post in HTML. Please do not send any
attachments, or backgrounds.

This is a difficult question. Depending on how well the lightning or the
severity of the power surge was, will determine if the damage is visible or
not. A general failure can also look the same depending on how the device
failed.

You really have to take more care to evaluate of the customer is being
truthful or not. If you look at the weather reports for the day, and you
have a client come in with something that is not working, it is very easy to
correlate the events. As for a power serge or brownout, maybe the
electrical company may have logs to this effect. But, then again, under
many circumstances they may have not known themselves if there was a rapid
serge.

I had a modem and TV that was damaged by lightning. There were no visible
means to determine this. The TV, I was able to service, but the modem had
to be scrapped.

Today, we are supposed to be experiencing a geomagnetic storm from the sun.
We are in Canada, and are told that in our geographic location we may be
most susceptible from this. There are many companies that let their
employees go home early, and they did a complete shutdown in order to not
take any chances. I am still working on, because we cannot afford to close
for the day. We have to give our contracts full service at any time.

--

Greetings,

Jerry Greenberg GLG Technologies GLG
=========================================
WebPage http://www.zoom-one.com
Electronics http://www.zoom-one.com/electron.htm
=========================================


Is there anybody out there that can provide me with some advice in this
regard.

We test electronic equipment for the insurance industry of new claimants
that have institute a claim regarding "Lightning damage/ power surge damage"
to computers and computer equipment.

Regards

 

[ForensicOke]

My apologies to Baphomet. I'm a newbie and is still learning along the way.

Thanks for all the answers and advice. My collogues were right, I should
have joined this newsgroup long ago!

Furthermore, I would like to know if there is a way to differentiate between
a power surge not caused by lightning and a spike caused by lightning by
testing the components on the motherboard?

I know that there is a difference in change over time between a normal power
surge and surge caused by lightning (transient much faster in nanosecond)
and was wondering if that perhaps can in some way give an indication on the
components which of the two it is. We have tried signal tracking but that
can only give an indication of a good, bad, or marginal components on the
mobo and does not help very much.

Normally we check for lightning activity via the Weather Service in the area
stipulated by the claimant as place of loss, but remember we are in South
Africa! The Weather Service here only keep record of lightning activity and
can not differentiate between whether it was cloud-to-cloud activity or
cloud-to-ground activity. Damage via lightning (we have discussed this with
various lightning experts in the US) can only take place when it is a
cloud-to-ground strike and thus we are back to square 1.

Regards
ForensicOke

 

[Fred Abse]

Is there anybody out there that can provide me with some advice

Yes, don't post in HTML. You're more likely to get responses.

 

[ForensicOke]

I just want to thank you guys for all the info and response. We are now
working through it and really appreciate it!

Thanks!


that have institute a claim regarding "Lightning damage/ power surge damage"
to computers and computer equipment.

That could be very dependent on the way the equipment is used.

Big damage is easy to see; but some damage can only be verified by testing

Some years ago, I worked for a major telecom that used a serial network
(DataKit) for their PC/printer/UNIX networking. The headquarters building was
struck by lightning and we found LOTS of dead serial ports over the next few
days.

No visible motherboard damage on most of the PC's that were on floors other than
the one where the lightning hit, just sufficient electrical damage to make the
serial ports non-functional. Since the serial port was on the motherboard, the
motherboard had to be replaced on every problem computer.


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