Hardware & Technical RMA joys!

[Asp Explorer]

Quite the conundrum here!

Friend was vacuuming their apartment, cable got accidentally pulled out, and plugged back in with the motor still winding down. Finished vacuuming.

Goes to check their facebork or whatever, PC and monitor switched off, and won't switch back on again, panic texts. I pop round after work and coax the monitor back into life, but PC remains dead, cable modem power supply is junked so I pull a spare from the back of the car and get it back online so at least they have wifi and ipad.

PC power supply checks out ok, motherboard has no LED's, pulled the SSD and no life even on a USB converter. Machine is relatively new, built around Chrimble last year and it's completely toasted.

Wondered if any electrical bods could enlighten me on just what unplugging/plugging the hoover could have done to achieve this? PC and monitor were through one of the standard surge protected strip plugs. Cable modem was plugged direct to the wall.

Anyway - the fun really starts with trying to get all the bits replaced under all the different warranties - some are easier to deal with than others - but hopefully I'll get it rebuilt in a week or two

 

[m0rl0ck]

Im assuming you plugged it back into the surge protector, did you check the fuse in the surge protector? Check to see that the circuit breaker hadnt tripped?
Thats all i got. Never heard of such a thing.

 

[Chris Simon]

Im assuming you plugged it back into the surge protector, did you check the fuse in the surge protector? Check to see that the circuit breaker hadnt tripped?
Thats all i got. Never heard of such a thing.

Or simply try some different socket somewhere else in the house?
Also, some surge protectors have a fuse for each individual socket, so I'd try plugging everything to everywhere to find out if it's just one that failed or something.

Other than that it's highly unusual.
I mean, it's true that is your vacuum is older or of some crap brand, maybe it doesn't have a diod bridge to protect the network (the motor spinning down is basically a generator. ) so maybe it sent some weird frequency back and your PC took it personally.

 

[Morbad]

As Chris says, sounds like an older vacuum that sent a surge back through the circut as it's motor was still spun up. Also seems likely that it was either plugged into the same power strip as the PC (don't do this) or the power strip isn't a surge suppressor.

What PSU was this? A good unit should blow it's input fuse before passing through any dangerous surges.

 

[Asp Explorer]

Thanks for the replies peeps!

I'll pop over and take another look tomorrow. I'm not sure exactly where the hoover was plugged in, and it's a fairly modern-looking thing if I remember right. Power strip is some generic-looking Tripp Lite surge protector, I'll get the model later - but it's location makes me think it was not the receptacle used to power the hoover, and my friend states she used a completely different socket and was quite some distance from the PC.

PSU I can answer - Corsair CX550 that I use in many of my low-power builds. I've had very little trouble with them, and this unit seems to still work perfectly well within it's capabilities.