Ten years of personal computing and only once have i ever had a catastrophe close to last week. I was out of town, and best i can figure, lightning struck my house. Lots of circuit breakers were switched, and my modem from Brighthouse was fully dead.

The more exciting bit was what happened to my system, which is still kinda being decided. I have two rigs at home, and one laptop for travel. My secondary system is a dual core gaming rig from 2007, with an LGA 775 socket motherboard. My primary system has the 1155 socket with a quad core 3ghz processor. Both are currently completely unresponsive.

My secondary system houses a copy of my music and pictures, and is capable of minor gaming. My primary system is the nicest computer I have ever owned, and it has around 300gb of data that I cannot currently access. I think both have lost their motherboards.

Pretty much every major computer issue begins with an error message onscreen. Barring that, the motherboard comes equipped with lights, and sometimes numerical displays, which indicate where the problem lies. If the motherboard shows no life at all, then it could be a faulty power source.

The method for diagnosing a dead psu is fairly entertaining. It involves plugging the box into the wall, then using a paper clip to connect two protruding wires. Fear not - electrocution is unlikely. Sadly though, both my psus work fine, and the problem lies elsewhere.

Lacking a motherboard, I cannot continue with diagnostics. This means lightning has cost me atleast 300$, possibly more. Theres no reason I need two systems, but a single motherboard is gonna run me around 150$, and that might only buy me the ability to learn my hard drives, video card, and cpu are all cooked. I can't believe that I could become a person who needs to buy computer advice.