Hey i had to leave for work in a rush and left my computer on by mistake. It was sunny outide and didnt expect a lightning storm. when i came home, my computer was off. I booted up like normal and windows xp loaded up just as it always did. however when i try to click on a folder or control panel or pretty much any program file, the corresponding programs wont ever load. My aunt said it sounds like im missing a driver, but everything was functional before this storm and i have a surge protector. Im really confused. can someone offer any sort of advice?

i have had a similar experience. and ended up replacing the motherboard and modem. try clicking start,click,run type" chkdsk /f /r " minus quotes,click ok. might help, if it's just some data corruption. or use system restore, to before the lightning strike. mine started having ide controller errors, right afterward. static electricity can do some strange things. some minor enough that it only causes data errors.

if none of those work you will probably need to do a repair install. or a full install using the compaq xp restore disks.

I have a differnet take on your post. I am thinking if you had a surge suppressor, and its failure lite isn't on or the unit died, then the storm had nothing to with it. Smart move btw. Alot of folks forget that simple level of protection. Fact that it was good one day and not another would indicate to me a malware/port trojan/virus attack or system corruption. Something is grabbing processor time If system corruption, www nailed it. But if one of the other three apply the fix is remove the offender and then repair any damage. Are you running adaware, spybot, zonealarm and a updated AVirus? Have you run them lately?