I continual get electric shocks whenever i touch my PC chassis (a HP quad core - no mods - a few months old), plugging in the ipod Nano requires me wrapping my hand in two pairs of socks. I've tried a two houses (recently moved) and same result. How best to troubleshoot/fix?

Do whatever Crossy suggests, probably get your wiring Earthed /Grounded.

This is a common problem in Thailand where grounding simply does not exist.

Quick and dirty solution.

Simply attach a wire of about 2.5mm thickness to the case, pull the wire to a large metallic object (something much larger that your PC case) that goes into the ground outdoors.

You can also try to use a quality extension cord with a fuse or a UPS (if you have one or the other) and see if the grounding problem "goes away".

Sometimes it helps switching out the power supply, but this should not be needed.

Yup, it's leakage through the mains filter (not a fault).

Fix it by grounding your PC case.

You don't actually need a very good ground to prevent the tickles but the better the ground the safer.

Start here:- http://www.crossy.co.uk/wiring/earthing.html and here:- http://www.crossy.co.uk/wiring/2pin.html

First of all don't worry about it too much, they are relatively small shocks, caused by the small capacitors in the power filter of the power supply, potential will be 120V, amperage about zilch.

Grounding by a decent earth wire is a solution, or insulating yourself from the ground, we don't have much carpeting here in Thailand, but if you have a nice mat or something to put under your feet that'll get rid of it as well. Stone floors are highly conducting.

Earthing your power supply is the best, had the same problem kept on getting a boot off the box, an electrician friend said reverse the plug which reverses the polarity active for neutral and I got no more boots. however depends on who wired the power he can't believe anything

works at all.

simply wear shoes and the problem will be gone.

Okay great thanks for the help, will speak to a friend about an earth so no more shocks. Also could this affect hardware?

I just thrown out a dual dvi graphic card because it was showing lines (not the drivers fault as this was happening at bios boot time all the way through), no amount of resitting, cleaning, changing cables sorted it. Also one of my monitors now randomly switches off (happens several times a day), at first I played with the cable and i would after a few tweaks come back, now i jump hit the thing and comes back, weird. And now the speakers have gone, grrr.. Could just be bad hardware but I've never had so many problems in such a short amount of time with computer equipment.

An earth resolves the problem in its entirety or just shifts the leakage? i.e. is the leakage the issue with hardware or the absence of an earth?

I have an APC UPS but no difference, obviously not everything connected to the PC goes through the UPS tho.

Edited February 28, 201016 yr by mattcodes

Try turning the plug around assuming its one of those stupid two pin plugs..

I think this is what an electrician told me... and it worked.

simply wear shoes and the problem will be gone.

agree with that i kept getting shock off pc, worse was when touching camera when connected, realised i had been in shower and had wet feet, put my feet up on sofa no more shocks. other half was getting shock off wash machine i told her to wear flip flops and it was ok even though it is earthed but into to sandy ground. showering does worry me though what a great earth a wet body would be.

I always thought it was a mechanism for keeping geckos off electrical stuff