It never happens to you, right? We’re at home and hear the distant rumble of thunder and see a flash. It’s misty so we can’t see much but we go into the porch to watch the lightning (after I unplugged the computer). It’s a pretty intense storm and the following conversation takes place:
Paula: Wouldn’t it be nice if the lightning strikes in front of us so we can see it.
Me: It won’t happen as there are trees behind the house higher than us.

The next bit of lightning hit our house! Paula saw a thick blue and white spark on the wall of the house, the thunder was at exactly the same time as the lightning and a large click was heard inside the house. I thought a fuse had tripped, but all the electricity was fine. The I noticed that the lights were off on the ADSL router and I couldn’t get it to power up. It felt pretty hot and smelt hot too. So I turned the computer on, but it wouldn’t switch on – as I mentioned before, all the mains circuits were working. Eventually it powered up and I soon discovered that it had also sustained damaged through the ethernet port that I forgot to disconnect. The ethernet port no longer works, which is fine because I have wireless and also have ordered a new ethernet card for under £7. But, more alarmingly, my 12Gb RAM won’t run at 1600Mhz anymore and is stuck running at 1066Mhz instead. I’m hoping the ionised air inside the PC has just wiped from non-volatile memory settings in the BIOS, but I’ll find out soon…

Out of interest, I took the router apart (I’m now using my old router that was in the loft) and after a bit of searching saw the damage… So naturally, I got my macro lens and extension tubes out. The first photo isn’t cropped at all! The second photo is heavily cropped to show the detail.

Lightning damage inside ADSL router

Lightning damage inside the ADSL router