Could lack of grounding cause wierd behaviors?

[Yuniverse]

my rig just put together is having all kinds of problems...

random restart and BSOD, and not being able to go past post.

I thought perhaps my Sapphire X1950 GT, or Creative Audigy ZS 2 Platinum maybe causing the problem... but another potential culprit came to mind.

the Power Supply. It's Antec NeoHE 430... Bios tells me everything is honkeydorey, but...

then, another idea... I just realised that none of the outlets in the computer room has any grounding.

So, I'd like to ask all the experts: would lack of grounding cause somethings like above?

would anyone know how i can get grounding in my outlet aside from hiring an electrician that may cost arm and a leg? (i do have a phone jack 2 feet away that is grounded)

my rig:
Core2Duo E6400
Patriots 2GB(2x1GB) Extreme Performance DDR2 800
Seagate ES ST3320620NS 320GB SATA
GIGABYTE GA-965P-DS3 Motherboard v.3.3
Sapphire X1950 GT 256MB
Creative Audigy2 ZS Platinum

Please help

thanks in advance

 

[Bill Kunert]

Using volt meter see if you get a reading from the screw that secures the cover plate on you recepticle to one of the plug in slots. If you do it means the center screw is probably connected to conduit which would be grounded. You can then use an adapter with a pigtail and cennect the pigtail under the center cover screw. When checking for voltage you should get a reading to one pin but not to the other. The neutral lead is connected to ground in the power system. You should read a slight voltage from neutral to ground because there is a slight voltage drop between neutral and earth ground. If you don't get a voltage reading to either slot you could connect to a copper water pipe. I wouldn't use the telephone ground in the phone jack because the wiring is extremely small and would be easily fried. The lack of an earth ground can cause problems in devices as sensitive as computers.

 

[Zepper]

You need to have a grounded outlet. I have brought long extension cords into where my computer is to get the grounding - occasionally all the way from the cellar. Or you can get a ground from several other places: cold water pipe from nearby bathroom (has to be metal all the way into the ground. Steam heat radiator which also has to have a metal path all the way into the ground. PSUs can be flaky without a true earth ground. Static can't bleed off from rotating drives w/o a true earth ground. If you don't have a true earth ground and can't rig one, IDK what to say. Get yourself a circuit (outlet) tester (less than $5.00) has at least 3 LEDs that tell you if your outlet is OK or not.

Of course that may not be the problem. It may just be a junk or lemon PSU. But you can't be sure w/o a true grounded outlet for testing.

.bh.

 

[Yuniverse]

Thank you both for your insights.

Another thing i noticed...

I usually turn my surgeprotector off when i turn the computer off.

When i turn the computer on, it would give me BSOD or restarts after boot(Desktop showing)... and sometimes gives various other errors.

However, after it goes through several restarts, it eventually boots up ok...

perhaps i shouldn't turn the surgeprotector off... i don't know...

i will try your suggestions, but honestly, i don't know half of the terms Bill has mentioned

i will update as to what happens

thank you again and please keep posting any suggestions/opinions.

Yuniverse

 

[Zepper]

Surge protector is not even working if the outlet doesn't have a true earth ground... :roll:
A decent surge protector will have an outlet-quality indicator built in to tell you if your outlet is OK - what does that tell you about YOUR surge protector?

.bh.

 

[imported_Imp]

No ground is not recommended. Then again, my place has 3 computers hooked up to a house with 100 year old wiring (not really, but the house is that old), and there is not ground. My APC surge protector has the 'building wiring fault' lit up all the time. However, for the past 10 years, not a single piece of electronics or computer part has ever been fried or acted weird for a power reason. It's definately a risk, but paying for an electrician to reqire the dump is way too much right now. Not to mention the walls that have to be torn up a bit.

 

[Yuniverse]

I have moved my computer to my living room where the outlets are grounded.
Finally the computer was acting somewhat normal. It wasn't restarting with errors 4-5 times before it would settle down like before.

However, because XP was installed when it was unstable(or so is my thinking) and i still saw a strange behavior, i decided to clean-install.

Everything was great until this morning (the day after).
It told me that it had successfully recovered registry data that was missing(?).
Then couple of seconds later, it told me that it's shutting down in 1 min(or 30 sec - i can't remember) NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 1073741819

So i looked in the event viewer and here's what was listed as errors in the system
10:15:27 Event ID 7009 Timeout (30000 milliseconds) waiting for the DCOM Server Process Launcher service to connect.
10:15:27 Event ID 7000 The DCOM Server Process Launcher service failed to start due to the following error:
The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.
10:18:05 Event ID 7023 The DNS Client service terminated with the following error:
The specified procedure could not be found.

And in the Application event viewer:
10:14:26 Event ID 1000 Faulting application svchost.exe, version 5.1.2600.2180, faulting module wuaueng.dll, version 5.8.0.2469, fault address 0x000b6471

Could someone help me make sense of what maybe going on? Do you think it's hardware issue?
I ran memtests w/o prob... perhaps it's the Sapphire X1950 GT, or Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 motherboard... How can i test this?

HELP!

 

[piasabird]

You can get a cheap grounding kit and run a wire to a cold water pipe if it is a metal pipe. Actually having a grounding rod just outside one wall of the house is an option also.

This might not help. Sometimes some motherboards or power supplies are just not stable. If you had unstable power for a while, you may have had some damage to your hard drive. Hard Drives are very sensitive to fluctuating power.

 

[Zepper]

YOu want to disable DCOM anyway as it is almost never used and is a big security hole. DCOMbobulator from http://www.grc.com will do that for you. And you can also get the program from http://www.majorgeeks.com - my favorite resource for Windows utilities. Generally if it's worth having, they mirror it or have a link to it.

.bh.