Electric Shock Made My Computer Restart

February 7, 2006 8:06 PM

I was typing on my laptop and my husband touched my face. His hand gave me a shock, and then my computer restarted itself.

My hand was connected to the computer and his hand was connected to me. My hands have been tingling ever since (about 10 minutes). Is my computer restarting itself after the shock a sign of bad things to come? Is there something I should do to prevent this from happening in the future? Anything else I should know? Thanks in advance for your help.

posted by JuliaKM to technology (9 comments total)

It's entirely possible that your computer will suffer no ill effects at all. It's also possible that it will fail unexpectedly, and catastrophically, in the near future. The most likely possibility, though, is it'll just start acting flaky soon, in ways that will be almost indistinguishable from "normal" computer problems.

Just back up all of your important data (like you should be doing anyway) such as financial and tax information, and personal documents that would be difficult or impossible to replace.
posted by CrayDrygu at 8:13 PM on February 7, 2006

I did that to my laptop a few months ago. Our office is pretty staticy and I get shocks pretty often from door handles and the like. Usually I think to touch the front of my desk before I sit down but one time I forgot and touched the laptop first and got a shock and the thing rebooted. As I said, that was a couple of months ago and its been fine ever since but it's not something that I'd want to happen very often. I don't really keep anything permanent on the laptop, all my documents are kept under version control on a server, but if there is anything important on yours you probably should back it up.
posted by octothorpe at 8:37 PM on February 7, 2006

Electronics are a lot more durable than many people seem to think, and catastrophic failure is a common mode when failure does occur. In other words, I wouldn't worry about it.

To cut down on static shocks in general, if that's a problem for you, humidification is a possible answer.
posted by trevyn at 9:04 PM on February 7, 2006

Try this thread from January 16, which links to two other AskMe's about computers and static electricity.
posted by mediareport at 9:05 PM on February 7, 2006

It's easily possible to do damage to electronics even with static discharges that you can't feel. That's why technicians wear grounding straps. A static zap is tens of thousands of volts... it's a very low amperage, but it's at a huge voltage. So it can jump through the air a short distance (air is an extremely good insulator), and then jump around in computer circuits, frying things left and right.

So if you're looking for reassurance that everything is okay, you've come to the wrong place. Everything MAY be okay. The only way to tell is by using the computer and watching for signs of damage. You obviously fried it enough to shock it into rebooting... whether or not the damage was permanent, only time will tell.
posted by Malor at 9:25 PM on February 7, 2006

Your laptop's motherboard has circuitry that senses when a jolt to the ground gets a little too powerful, and lucky for you, knows what to do when this condition is met: Power down.

The whole existence of a common ground throughout the entire machine is due to this very circumstance. That, and it's a lot easier to just run positive wires everywhere and ground to negative than to run dual power leads to every single circuit.

If you're still aching, it was a hell of a jolt, and if your laptop was still conscious enough to kill its own power, it's fine.

All modern PCs do this, including desktops.

Odds are about 99.923% that your laptop is fine.
posted by SlyBevel at 10:11 PM on February 7, 2006

A year ago, I touched my Altec InMotion and zapped it. Since then, it's been stuck in the On position. That is, I cannot use the slide switch to turn it off. It works just fine; it's just on all the time.
posted by megatherium at 4:23 AM on February 8, 2006

Wow, that must have been quite a shock. But, if the computer reboots and works normaly now it should be OK going forward. Sold state, digital electronics tends to either "work" or "not work"
posted by delmoi at 6:39 AM on February 8, 2006

You see, this is exactly what happens when superheros marry regular folk.
posted by bjork24 at 8:32 AM on February 8, 2006