You know that electricity is dangerous, so you probably avoid sticking your fingers into live light-bulb sockets and electrical outlets. Even without fingers, your computers, too, are sensitive to electricity, and you need to protect them from a variety of electrical dangers.
Protecting against electrical surges
An electrical surge is a sudden spate of very high voltage that travels from the electric lines to your house and ultimately to your computer. Computers are particularly sensitive to surges, and a real surge can fry your computer. The chips burn up and your computer becomes a doorstop.
Most of the time, surges occur as a result of a lightning strike, but the danger of a surge also exists if there's a brief blackout followed by a return of electricity. During the return of power, the voltage can spike.
You can safeguard against spikes by plugging your computer into a surge protector. The surge protectors that are commonly used look like electrical power strips, usually with four or five outlets. Read the specifications before you buy a surge protector to make sure that it's rated for real surge protection. (Voltage can rise by 10 volts or hundreds of volts, so make sure that the surge protector you buy can handle these extreme surges.)
If a power surge hits any piece of equipment that is attached to your computer by cable, the surge can travel to your computer. Therefore, plugging the computer into the surge protector isn't quite enough; you also have to use the surge protector to power the accessories that are connected to your computer (except for the printer; in fact, if you have a laser printer, you should never plug it into the same circuit as your computer).
Protecting against telephone line surges
Even large networks have been destroyed during a lightning storm, and frequently the surge came through the telephone lines, not the electrical lines. This is what happens: Lightning hits the telephone line; the surge comes through the telephone jack in the wall; it travels along the telephone cable from the wall to the modem; it travels from the modem to the computer's motherboard; it travels from the motherboard to the rest of the computer parts, including the network interface card (NIC); the NIC sends the surge out to the network cable; the cable sends the surge back to every NIC on the network; and each NIC sends the surge to its computer's motherboard. Every computer on the network is fried.
When a lightning storm is close, unplug your modem telephone cable at the wall jack and then unplug the computers.
Protecting against lightning hits
If lightning hits your power lines or your house, your surge protector may not be able to protect your equipment against the resulting surge. Thousands or tens of thousands of volts - sometimes more - result from a lightning strike. A surge protector can provide only so much protection, and a direct lightning hit exceeds that limit.
The only protection against lightning strikes is to unplug your computers and all your computer equipment. Stop working. Then walk around the house and unplug other equipment with chips that can fry during a lightning storm (such as your microwave oven, VCR, and so on).
Protecting against power loss
When you're running Windows, you can't just turn off your computer when you don't want to use it anymore. You must initiate a shutdown procedure using the Shut Down command on the Start menu. Otherwise, you may have a problem restarting your computer, or you may run into mysterious problems when you try to use software and Windows features after a power failure.
You can keep your computers running long enough to complete an orderly shutdown of all your software and the operating system if you have an uninterruptible power supply (UPS). A UPS is a mega-battery that you plug into the wall, and you then use the UPS outlets to connect your computer and monitor. If your power fails, your computer draws power from the battery, giving you enough time to shut down everything.
Understanding and fixing low-voltage problems
Sometimes, when everyone in town is using electrical gadgets at the same time, an area's all-around voltage drops. This is called a brownout. Computers - especially their hard drives and motherboards - are extremely sensitive to brownouts.
Well before you see the lights flicker, your hard drive can react to a brownout. Most of the time, that reaction destroys the part of the drive that's being accessed, and the result is that your drive develops bad spots - parts of the drive that can't be written to or read from. You can mark the bad spots to prevent the operating system from using those spots to hold data, but if the spots that go bad already have data on them, that data goes bad, too.
You can prevent most of the problems associated with bad spots caused by brownouts, and you can overcome those problems that you can't prevent by purchasing a voltage regulator. If you purchase a voltage regulator in addition to a UPS unit, plug the voltage regulator into the wall. If you're also using a surge protector, the surge protector is always plugged into the wall, with any other devices plugged into the surge protector.
Preventing static electricity damage
Static electricity is responsible for more damaged computers than most people realize. One day, when some hardware component mysteriously dies, you may not realize that you zapped it yourself.
You must discharge the electricity from your body before you touch the computer. Touch anything metal (except an electric appliance such as a computer or a lamp). A filing cabinet is good if one is handy. If nothing metal is within reach, attach a metal bar to the desk or table that your computer sits on.
