I bought a home a few years ago with a bedroom that only had one working outlet. The other two outlets in the room never worked. Let's call them A, B, and C. They're on a circuit with two other bedrooms and two bathrooms, all of which have power. There's a GFCI outlet in one bathroom.

I finally started to care enough to repair them; I assumed it was a faulty outlet somewhere, and replaced the one outlet that worked (A) and the first one in the circuit that didn't work (B). After the outlets were replaced, outlets B and C initially had a hot-neutral difference of 120V. I plugged in a printer, and it started up properly. I plugged my computer and TV back into outlet A, and noticed the printer lost power. Thinking it was a loose connection, I re-seated the screws of the outlets I replaced, making sure everything was tight. I then went ahead and took a multimeter to outlet B. Hot-ground had a solid 120V. Hot-neutral had 0V. What confused me the most is that neutral-ground had a 90V difference. I've never seen an outlet that high before, and it's a weird voltage for a 120V circuit.

I took a few measurements of socket A, which was normal, then went ahead and plugged my computer and TV into the one working outlet. Everything worked fine on outlet A. But now that there was a load, when I checked socket B again, the neutral-ground difference was 0V. Hot-ground was still 120V, and hot-neutral was still 0V.

Any ideas?

I would get one of these nifty outlet testers. They are relatively inexpensive, and are very helpful in figuring out wiring issues.



Is it possible that your outlets are tied to a wall switch somewhere? Do the top and bottom receptacles behave the same way? In some bedrooms without an overhead light, I have seen one outlet switched, and one not... in this case there are tabs between the wires on the sides of the receptacles that are broken off to separate the outlets....

Heath

I guess that your problem is the neutral that must be loose or broken between receptacles.

Be careful about the measures you receive when you use a tester. For example, you have a lamp connected to one receptacle, and you have a broken wire between receptacles, you might perceive 120v anyway in the affected receptacle, because the light bulb -through its element- is letting pass the hot current through the neutral that goes to the next receptacle, plus you can receive a Neutral reading from the now broken Hot wire as a feedback from the following receptacle...so you have a false reading.

To have a better reading, the best is to disconnect every appliance, lamp, etc that is connected to the circuit in question.

The advice given in the prior reply right above is also correct, it might be a switch that controls receptacles B and C.

But, if no switch is controlling those receptacles, you might have the Neutral wire loose or broken between receptacles.

Sometimes the circuit runs different than we assume, and it might go through the ceiling light box as a junction place to distribute the power to the receptacles. I saw lots of houses wired that way, it is weird, but such is the way the installers did it and it's legal, this is to say, not against the NEC.

If no switch controls the receptacles, try first the removal of the nearest receptacles, not only receptacle A, one of them might have the faulty Neutral connection, even the one in the bathroom. If no fault is found in the receptacles, then the problem is bigger, it might be a junction box somewhere -like the example mentioned with the ceiling light- or a broken wire due to a nail or a screw when the drywall, floor mouding, a picture in the wall, etc was installed....this is the worst scenario.

I'll hope is just a simple problem between receptacles, try to find the direction of the main electric panel to use it as a guide of the running circuit, the nearest receptacle to the area where the main panel is located, might be the first in the circuit, this method of troubleshooting is not necessarily a rule, but works in most cases.