Dirty power in house causing PC to freeze?

dr.stevil

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I’m having an issue with a computer that I can’t figure out. I gave this machine to a family member for Xmas and they’ve been having issues with the machine randomly freezing/going completely unresponsive. When I gave them this machine, it worked flawlessly. The components are from my old HTPC and they’ve never given me an issue.

I tried having them go into the bios and let it sit for a day, just to rule out OS/driver issues off the bat and even that froze up eventually.

Assuming it was a hardware problem, I now have the computer back here and saw a bunch of logs in event viewer about kernel power errors. I turned it on and just have it running in the corner of my office and uptime is going on 8 hours, with zero problems. The computers owner couldn't get the machine to stay stable for more than a few hours when they had it in their possession.

Their house is very old and I’m wondering if shoddy electrical could potentially cause something like this? I don’t believe they’ve ever ran into anything like this with other computers though, so I’m at a loss of what it could be. Any ideas?
 
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Thanks for the feedback. The machine stayed completely stable at my house for more than two days idling with an occasional load thrown at it. I honestly don’t believe it’s a problem with the hardware at this point.

I spoke with said family member and apparently her husband had put that line in (he’s not an electrician) where the machine was running. I told her to buy a UPS to help clean the power coming into it so we’ll see what happens. I also told her it’s probably a good idea to get a real electrician to look her husbands work over.

If this fixes it I’ll be sure to report back. In all the years I’ve been building PCs I’ve never seen anything like this
 
>> I spoke with said family member and apparently her husband had put that line in (he’s not an electrician) where the machine was running.

Uh oh. :)

Check the wall socket connections, ground, polarity (hot & common correct), and the breaker in the box.

I live in an old house and our microwave would cut out sometimes until it finally quit totally.

Thought it was the microwave at first but found no AC at the wall and had to replace a bad breaker.
It actually failed due to carboned up connections to the bus bar from the high current draw (small amount of arcing).

.
 
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