Just in case you get thunderstorms

[Corona]

For those of you with Win10 on a tower that is at least 3 years old, if your PC has taken too many lightning strike shut-downs and you want it to start up again correctly, hold down F3 and restart. Otherwise you get a screen asking which country your keyboard is affiliated with, with no keyboard or mouse control. I learned this today the hard way.

 

They really wanna kill the PC, don't they.

[nukecad]

I don't think you can blame Microsoft for lightning strikes killing your PC, Thor maybe?

 

You could try a surge protector or a UPS, but it's probably not going to protect against nearby strikes.

 

Best advice is to shut down and unplug during thunderstorms, don't forget the ethernet cable.

There again you may not even know that a distant storm is happening and still get a power spike.

 

Without spending a fortune on industrial scale lightning protectors there is not a lot you can do other than claim on your houshold insurance if your PC gets fried..

[Andavari]

Surge protection is the cheap way, but if you go that route buy a good name brand one that has a product replacement up to a certain dollar amount and they'll pay for anything damaged attached to it. The one I have will pay up to one hundred thousand dollars - not that my stuff is anywhere worth that amount.

 

Even with a surge protector you'd still have to run chkdsk /f on all the hard disk(s) if a storm caused a power outage whilst the PC was on.

 

As soon as I hear thunder I turn off all my computer based electronics (PC, PlayStation's, etc.,) that are plugged into wall outlets.

 

Luckily I haven't had any power failures due to thunderstorms this year, yet, although I remember a few years ago when it was happening at least weekly.