A few weeks ao\go we had a bad lighting storm in my town. A bolt hit outside my house no more then 20 feet away and shut everything in the house down for about 30sec. It fried my Network and since I have an old motherboard I couldnt go right out and buy a new card. I opted for the external network card which looks like a small router.

The problem now is that the graphix on my games, and any streamin content, movies or games becomes very choppy and unplayable about 10min in. Could the lighting have damaged my motherboard as well? I dont mind replacing it if so, but since its an older model alot of things are intregrated w/ it, like the new RAM and gfx card I just bought

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Tats, welcome to the PCHF.

If the network card was damaged in the lightning storm, then the rest of the motherboard could very well have been damaged.

However, it's not likely.

Your best bet is to go back to the shops and buy a RealTek network card (these are cheap enough) and plug it into a PCI slot.

Well that part of the problem, my motherboard doesnt have any open PCI slots, its uses a different kind... the name escapes me atm but its a pretty old style. Thats why Im dreading replacing it, since I had to buy the gfx card and RAM specifically for this old type.

Appreciate the response though, could this crappy network card Im using cause video to stutter and **** out?

You are thinking of ISA. They never made Ethernet cards for those as far as i know, and they definetly dont make any now. It seems like your graphics card might have taken some damage from the power surge. Do you have another card you might be able to try in it?

Sorry for the late respone, Ive been so busy I forgot my post. AW 3_3 yes ISA is the type, and you're right they dont make them anymore. I dont have an old graphics card since t he original one is past of the motherboard.

I have a few PC help programs like Belarc and SI Sandra on my PC, and everything checks out ok on them when I run them, so idk if its the gfx card or not. Is there any program I can run which would help determine if thats the problem?

I dont mind buying a gfx card, but I would hate to have to get a whole new MB, since it would make more sense to get a whole new tower