A lot of older houses in the US don't have grounded receptacles - it wasn't required by code and everything you plugged in back in the "old days" had two "prongs". The ugly part is where you have receptacles that have three prongs, but there isn't any ground - someone has remodeled and they couldn't find the old style two prong receptacles in stores anymore so it looks like a grounded outlet but isn't.
My house dates from around 1950 and the owners before me finished the basement, and left me with three prong receptacles without a ground. I don't know if they ran the electrical and were cheap, or if those runs predated them or not. There isn't any way to rewrite them to include a ground without tearing off all the drywall. I can see the electrical cords are stapled to the studs in the one area of the basement that isn't finished, so I assume that was done everywhere and thus can't use the existing wiring to pull new wiring. So I just live with it.
I have my computer in that finished basement, on a UPS that has a permanent warning light on the back about an improper ground, but it hasn't ever caused any problems for me. There ARE grounds for the direct wired HVAC/furnace and the outlet serving the washer/dryer, so at least the places where it really matters someone got it right!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
