My website is down.

We had a storm last night. My husband told me this morning (when I was still half asleep) that the electricity had gone out and come back on sometime during the night.

I didn't think to check my computers in the morning. I just set some of the clocks and left for work.

But now Rob has reported the bad news. DS9, my main computer, my web server, my reads-every-earthlink-e-mail-address-but-one computer, the one I only recently upgraded to the tune of about $150, will not boot!

It's not detecting its hard drives. And I can't even try to save them. I'm at work and the computer is, of course, at home.

So presently, all my websites are down and I may have to redo my Outlook profile AGAIN (should I be able to get anything to boot that computer back up). I may have to buy a new hard drive. I may have to buy a whole new motherboard. I really hope it doesn't come to either of those. But I'd like to be home to try and find out.

The proper sequence would be to take everything off that motherboard except the fan. (With onboard video, NIC, sound, etc., I can't quite do that anyway.) Turn it on. Fan turns? Good. Add a hard drive. Does it detect it? Good. Add the other.

Basically you add one component back at a time and try to boot it. You are trying to see at what point it fails. If I can't read the hard drives there, I can try them in another computer and that will tell me if they are the problem or the IDE controller on the motherboard.

I do know, from my husband's report, that the on-board video card and power supply are fine. He could see the POST (Power On Self Test). It gets power. The monitor gets video. It next tried to detect hard drives and couldn't and that's what's got me worried. And there's 2 hours before I can get home.

I want to cry.