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This Is What Happens When Lightning Strikes Your Laptop

Parts-People Dell Laptop Experts

114,842 views

This $3000 Alienware m18 R1 came completely dead after a suspected lightning strike destroyed it. After opening the laptop, I can see the damage, and I am not sure if this laptop can be saved.

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We have specialized exclusively in Dell laptops since 2002 and stock more than 500k genuine OEM Dell laptop parts.
💻Dell Alienware m18 R1 Parts
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🙎‍♂️About me
I (Nathan) have been working on and repairing Dell laptops for more than 25 years, and in 2002, I started Parts-People.com, which is a company that specializes exclusively in Dell and Alienware laptops. We buy out and stock all of Dell's laptop inventory, which Dell no longer stocks. We now have more than 500K Dell genuine OEM parts in our warehouse and have become the number one place for Dell laptop owners. You can purchase parts to repair your own laptop or send it in and have me or one of our Dell experts service your machine.

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20 Comments

@ZenoTheThinker 9 months ago

There is something extremely satisfying with watching someone methodically and systematically error search a piece of hardware/software and then proceed to fix said error. Gives you hope

@FirstLast-jl6fr 9 months ago

Experience is priceless :o) Very impressive diagnostics when you don't have a schematic to work from.

@zenithperigee7442 9 months ago

I had a desktop machine that was taken out by lightning. Apparently the surge protector "protected the surge so it reached the computer," lol. At first I thought the PS was dead but nope, I looked over the board and I found the damaged chip! It actually blew a piece of the chip out leaving a hole in the center.... First time in life I'd ever seen that.

@rosariodagosto6484 9 months ago

I fixed another ALIEN again

@manga99uk 9 months ago (edited)

On your lives you always say the repair part of you business is really not where you make your money! But you can see you don't do repairs for the love of money, you can see you enjoy the thrill of the finding and fixing these dead parts it's what keeps you going in life and making others happy keep up the great work 👍🙌

@natureflixs1 9 months ago

When that screen came on I could tell that you enjoy your job.

@inigomontoya860 8 months ago

I've dealt with several lightning strikes before. It's amazing what it does and does not damage. I had lightning strike a metal quonset building on the North side of a large brick schoolhouse once. Nothing on the North side of the school was harmed at all. But I lost every NIC on the South side of the school though. It also fried the analog display boards in about half of those same PCs.

Years later as an Apple service tech, I had a Performa tower PC that had a modem that wasn't working right. I could issue AT commands to it all day long but it was acting like it wasn't getting tone. I had bigger fish to fry so it went back on the rack while I focused on a higher priority case. After lunch I was walking back into the service area behind that storage rack when something caught my eye. It was the back of that same Performa. I pulled it off the rack and put it back on the bench face down under the light. There was the problem. The copper pins on the modem had been melted off until they were little sping-tensioned nubs sticking out. Somehow the transient voltage was enough to melt the pins on the modem but it didn't fry the IC on the modem itself. Wild.

@vgamedude9811 6 months ago

Best repair channel I've seen so far.

@davidhines7592 9 months ago

i saw that first damage you did immediately thought 'has it got layers melted together inside the pcb?'

@transientvoltage 9 months ago

I'm always intrigued by how lightning caused issues differ from one to the next. One I experienced as a kid wiped out a VCR and part of the movie I was watching, the TV and nothing else got damaged.

@HowieGardiner 9 months ago

I fixed a Texas Instruments Ti-990 minicomputer that had a similar lighting strike situation in 1984. It hit an rs-232 remote terminal cable that was buried between buildings 😮

@Ed_Stuckey 9 months ago

You continue to make the near impossible look routine. 💯

@The_Real_Phil_Lee 9 months ago

This makes me very thankful for the fact that I have fibre to the home!

@4kocour424 9 months ago

1) Absolutely amazing work.
2) Your store has parts for old M9700 and older Alienwares?! I need a LCD Back cover and you have it in stock, OMG! Thank you and ordering!

@jeraldbottcher1588 9 months ago

Great work. This really helps with reducing E-Waste, and saves the end user a load of money!

@jazzerbyte 9 months ago

When lightning hit my house, I lost the USB port on the laptop but everything else survived. I had plugged a printer via USB but the printer was not on the UPS. I became a fan of wireless printers after that one.

@7649angel 5 months ago

Lovely job. I love your channel. I am 77 and used to be a technician working for Hammond Organ UK. I left at the end of 1995 but before that I repaired organs down to component level. I loved it all. Watching you brings back happy memories. Obviously tech has developed a great deal and my eyes would not cope with it now. Keep going with the Chanel. Giving me lots of joy watching it. Thank you.

@keithbuckner7296 9 months ago

Nice work, yeah lightning can do some really weird stuff, I even killed a desktop once from a static charge from carpet on me, just touched the case or network switch, actually took out the 4 port switch and nic in the desktop.