Half the outlets in my home office just died, is this a breaker thing or something worse?
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Bit of a random one but I'm hoping someone here has been through this. Two of the four outlets in my home office stopped working yesterday, no bang, no burning smell, they just quietly gave up. The other two are fine and everything else in the house seems normal, and when I checked the breaker panel nothing looked tripped, though I'll admit I'm not entirely sure what I'm looking for in there. I'm trying to work out whether this is something simple I can sort myself or whether I should just get someone in before I make it worse, because I've heard enough stories about old wiring in these houses to be a little cautious. While searching around for what might cause this I ended up on https://www.kitchenbathpaloalto.com/locations/palo-alto/electrician/ and it mentioned a few possibilities like a loose connection or a failed outlet further up the circuit, which I hadn't considered. Has anyone had this happen and did it turn out to be a quick fix or the start of a much bigger electrical problem? Also curious whether it's normal for one room to be split across two circuits like this, because that seems to be the case here and it's confusing me.