A fatal blow to my reciever

[Mania]

If you're in the US your receiver has a five year warranty so have Sony fix it. My friend had his Onkyo receiver damaged by a lightning strike and Onkyo fixed it under warranty, although he didn't tell them how it got damaged. If you have a surge protector they likely have some sort of warranty for connected equipment as well but in this case you're better off going straight to Sony. If you don't have a Sony service center nearby you'll have to mail the receiver to them but they'll cover the return shipping. Send a copy of the warranty and the receipt along with the receiver because some of the people I've talked to at Sony don't even know about the ES warranty.

thanks, I forgot about the 5 yr warranty of the ES stuff. I guess I should see if I can get it honored. Its going to be tough to live without a receiver untill I get it fixed, and who knows how long that will take??

[stevos2005]

I'll give my .02 about proper grounding. Yes, it is very possible to have all your equipment connected to a good surge protector without proper grounding and have it go. One easy way to tell if the surge protector is properly grounded is if you have grounded (3-prong) outlets to the surge protector. If you have ungrounded (2-prong) outlets, then the outlet is not grounded. Even if you have 3-prong outlets, the outlet may not be properly grounded, as the ground wire could have come loose, etc.

By the way, very sorry to hear about your loss. I had a decent Pioneer LD player I bought about 10 years ago, and about 4 years ago there was a bad storm and blew the player. This has happened before and cost $100 to fix. My place was ungrounded. Since then, I had commercial grade (20-amp) grounded outlets installed. No problems whatsoever since.

[Mania]

What did it take to ground the outlet(s) properly? Can I go to Lowes or Home Depot and pick something up or do I have to have an electrician do it? I am renting a VERY old townhouse (over 100 yrs) right now, so don't want to have to pay an electrician, as I may move in the next year.

Are there any other precautions that I can take to prevent this from happening in the future, besides the obvious unplug everything during a storm?