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z

wrote:
RBM (remove this) wrote:
The first thing you should do is verify that there is no ground. If the
cable is metal, that would serve as ground and you can buy ground wires to
connect to the box and receptacle or self grounding outlets

exactly, upgrading to 3 prong is easy if metal cable like BX or conduit
was run in the first place.

Yeah, if your house was built/wired within reasonably recent times, it
will have conduit with the 2 prong outlets (or BX) and 3 prong outlets
will be essentially grounded by the attachment screws, although I guess
you're supposed to run a pigtail from the ground screw to a screw on
the box. I do, anyway.

If you can see the wiring running around an unfinished area, like your
basement ceiling, you can either see the conduit/bx/romex or else see
"knob and tube", with individual conductors attached to porcelain
insulators. Those are only the two conductors and obviously not
grounded. Search this newsgroups, it's a popular topic.

you might also ask your neighbors, who have likely been thru this.

to protect computer a UPS is prefered, be sure to run phone and modem
thru UPS.