Okay, suppose the computer had a surge protector. And suppose someone plugged another appliance into the surge protector, and the net result was that now the computer just won’t turn on. At all. Period. Any suggestions?
Is it a desktop computer? I’m no repairman - but it might just be your power supply. You can get that replaced / replace it fairly easily.
It could be as simple as unplugging the other appliance and looking for the fuse or circuit breaker on the surge protector.
Also try the computer directly into the wall outlet, just to see if it works and isolate the problem to the surge protector.
Yes dear, I will never ever plug the vacuum into anything but the wall socket ever again, ever, I promise, cross my heart. Can we drop it now, please?
Replace the surge protector. Unless you really are my husband, in which case I already did, so quit fussing about it, please, because it’s fine now. 
You may have blown out a part but the computer or at least your data is almost certainly salvageable.
Others have started but here are the order of things to check:
- The surge protector switch.
- The surge protector itself
- The outlet itself (test it with something else)
- Try a new plug.
Computer stuff:
- Typically the only things that get damaged during something like this are
A) The power supply. They are rather cheap and easy to install
B) The motherboard. These are not that easy to install but they usually cost only $100 or so.
Don’t believe any technician when he blabs on about burning out the hard drive, CD burner, or anything else. It is possible but not likely and some of them just say because they get so used to telling everyone that.
Well, the other appliance that’s plugged into the surge protector is still functioning, so presumably it’s not the SP. The monitor and the computer tower still have blinking standby lights, so presumably it’s not the power source. The computer itself is still under warranty, and it needed something else done to it anyway, so that’s doable.
And it wasn’t the vacuum cleaner; it was the printer. It also was not me who did it, nor was it my computer. He’s just been saying, “Why don’t you ask your Straight Dope pals?” so here I am.
I once plugged a laser printer, a small one, dammit :rolleyes: into the UPS despite the dire warnings not to. Sure enough, it shut down and I had to cycle it on and off before I had voltage again.
Try pulling the plug on the PC and restarting.
That’s what I would think. Tripped the breaker on the strip.
Is the monitor plugged into the same power strip? Does it work?
Plug the computer directly into the wall and see what happens.
I actually just got my desktop’s power supply replaced today for $80 (parts and labor).
Dunno if that’s your problem (seems odd that you’d still have standby lights on the tower…but if it won’t turn on at all, that’s still my first guess), but if you just haul your tower into a local repair shop they should be able to figure out if that’s it pretty quickly. The guy just plugged his own power cord into my supply, didn’t turn on, he pulled a known working supply out and plugged it into all the appropriate ports on the inside of the computer, plugged it in, it worked. He let it boot to make sure nothing else was affected. He then removed the old supply and screwed in the new one, tied all the cables up with wire ties and put the case back together. Sucks that I paid the equivalent of $160/hour when I probably could have done it myself, but it was quick and easy and I didn’t have to worry about screwing anything up. I was in and out (without an appointment) in less than 20 minutes.
Well, we got lucky. The guy who comes over to watch Galactica with us did the same thing once, printer and all. He did something to our computer, I’m not clear on what, and now it’s up and running again. Whew! Thanks to all who replied, though!
Gee, it would be great to find out what your friend did. It was obviously not the power supply nor the surge protector nor the power source as people have suggested. So what did he do? Reseat the memory? What?
My guess? With blinking standby lights but it won’t turn on? What would I do?
Unplug the power cord from the back of the computer. Plug the power cord back in. Restart and enjoy. I betcha that’s what he did.
Doctor Who: Could be; sometimes power supplies are your friend, like when I tried to graft an old MFM HD to my parent’s 486, tipped it off the cardboard box I was resting it on, and shorted it against the case in a shower of sparks. In that case, it shut down automatically, and was fine on restart.
Then again, a few months back I had ID’d my co-worker’s PC as being the source of a strange odor, and (despite it being turned off) was about to unplug it as a precaution when a component in the power supply exploded with a bang and little bits of burnt plastic floated everywhere. That took out the CPU, RAM, mobo, video card, HD (melted a chip on the controller), CDROM… and I’m suspicious of the ethernet card.
Newer computers have a small switch on the back of the power supply as well. Flip this off and on; there may be a small breaker and you can reset it.
It was something that involved taking off the side panel of the tower. I’ll ask Mr. Rilch tomorrow.