So this all happened when someone plugged in a space heater into a bedroom outlet. it caused a breaker to blow and a few outlets to stop working aswell. At first i just thought it was a breaker that had blown so i flipped it back on and power was restored to the room but the outlets were still not functional.
Green Star: Working outlets
Red Star: Non working outlets
Yellow Box: GFI outlets
Purple star: Where the heater was plugged in
Some things ive done to troubleshoot is first check voltages at outlets 2-8 and they are all reading under 120 volts usually around the 4-40 range. i thought it might have been an outlet that had failed internally and stopped working. So i replaced outlets 2-8 and 10 but the same issue persists i tried using a fluke tone generator to see if the space heater caused some degragation in the wire because of the wattage it required but i was able to succesfully trace the tone from 2-8 and from 1-2 and from 10-9 so im not really sure what the issue could be at this point the breaker seems solid, ive replaced all effected outlets, Double checked GFI's and replaced affected ones. Sort of at a loss here.
Note:Ive also firmly pushed all breakers on and off
Something interesting is the outlets are 2 pronged even though the breaker box is grounded
Best Answer
Officially, wiring is done in a tree topology - each segment branches off another. However, in practice, most wiring is done in a vine topology -- they're all in a row.
Either way... the problem is in one of two places.
Fiddling with any other receptacles won't do a thing.
That's because the problem is in the wire or the wire ends/splices. Failure of a wire is extremely rare. It's almost always where the wire connects to something else.
The usual cause is a "back stab" wire connection into the socket: the kind where you jab it into a hole and the socket just grabs the wire. Backstabs are legal way to wire sockets - one time - but they're not very reliable*. It is much, much better to use the side screws.
* Backstabs are made for a single use. If you pull the wire out, the spring is sprung. Also, when you are shoving the receptacle back into the socket, forces on the wires can lift it off its intended contact area, or overload the spring and cause it to lose tension.