Let me reiterate my concern. Even if a tree struck by lightning lives and continues to grow, the tree may well have damage that will not only limit its lifespan, but also can make it a hazard in the future. Some trees can survive a lightning strike--small ones like resin describes--and be OK. I say OK and mean OK, not really fine. White oak survives and grows as well as any tree, and a really notable lightning survivor, or so I am told, is the larger of the two tuliptrees next to Monticello, T. Jefferson's home in Charlottesville, VA. This tree is aver 8 feet in diameter and is, I am told, hollow from the old lightning damage. But the tree has closed its wound completely and you can't see any trace of it now. But in my old neighborhood in Arlington, VA a really huge tuliptree was struck a few years ago and the lightning made a path between a fork in the tree that had a good "bridge" of wood between. At this point the bridge was killed and unless one looked very carefully one would not see this critical damage. This tree is so large that if this now killed bridge splits, a house could be crushed and people killed. Even if a tree just has a streak down its trunk, this is killed wood and it may not heal. Rot and bugs of various kinds can get into the tree and start working away at the tree's basic support. Please be careful! --Spruce

sorry guys and gals, i changed a setting in my photobucket account and all of the links were changed. Here's a link to my albums. feel free to browse through, the guest password is "brugmansia". The new photos are on pages 1 and 2. The rest are older pics. To explain a bit of the above: when i first joined GW, i was really into the seed trading forums. I traded a lot and for several reasons did not come through with several trades. I've appolagized and been away from the trading forums for a long time already, and really don't plan of being active there again. well, there's people who track my every move and sabotage every attempt to carry on an informative conversation. I've emailed romando with an appology so we'll see how it goes. I appolagize to you all for all of this. Here is a link that might be useful: June 2008 photos

Hard to say what you should back up because we do not know what you have. All personal data, email addresses and perhaps favourites/bookmarks of course. As importantly is the drivers for all the motherboard stuff like sound, LAN IDE or SATA drivers. However if you have the CD that came with the motherboard they will all be there. If this is a factory built machine you should have either a recovery partition on the hard drive or CDs. If a factory built life can be easy, just start the recovery process and the computer gets returned to the state it was when it left the factory. You will need drivers for any add on boards like a video or sound card if these are not built into the motherboard. What make and model is this? As Zep says, don't mess with your registry. Nothing will be improved but much could go wrong compounding your problems.

Unfortunately lightening strikes and power surges love logic boards. I have never heard of it getting to the motor. The only sure way to troubleshoot the logic board is replacement.