Lavelle;
It sounds like you are having voltage spikes or overvoltage conditions if you burned out two monitors and a computer (did I read that right?). You should have the AC outlets checked for voltage and grounding.
To protect your equipment from damage due to power fluctuations you should purchase an Uninterruptable Power Supply, such as APC brand UPS's. They come in a variety of capacities. I would recommend one of the 500 series if you have an LCD monitor, or a 725 watt model for a CRT monitor. They have a control cable that you plug into a USB port, after you install the PowerChute software. The software will shut down or hibernate the computer in the event of a power outage. The unit itself will limit power surges and keep the voltage within a safe range, or shut down the computer to protect it. These run from about $50 to $80 for the aforementioned models, and more for higher capacity models.
As for your data, is the hard drive they are stored on still working? If so you can make it a slave in the new computer, by plugging it into the IDE cable and setting the jumper on the back to Slave, as indicated on the diagram on the unit. Then set the other hard drive that came with the new computer to be Master. The old drive would be seen as drive D and you can drag and drop, read or write to it.
If your computer uses SATA drives you should have two sockets for drive data cables.
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Bob "Wiz" Feinberg
Moderator of the SGF Computers Forum
Visit my Wiztunes Steel Guitar website at: http://www.wiztunes.com/
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Read Wiz's Blog for security news and update notices. My FAQs.[This message was edited by Wiz Feinberg on 25 October 2006 at 12:57 PM.]
[This message was edited by Wiz Feinberg on 25 October 2006 at 12:58 PM.]
