I have lights in my house that have both a regular switch and a dimmer switch. A few days ago I used the regular switch to turn on the lights and it looked like a circuit breaker tripped and the lights went out. I checked the main box and no circuits were tripped... and I looked for a sub-panel and no such luck.

A few weeks ago someone was working on one of the outlets near the lights that went out and was using a heavy drill that tripped the outlet circuit. Again, no circuit breaker was down on the main box. The guy said that the outlet was on a different circuit... but I have no idea how he got the outlet working again.

I tried checking all of the GFCI outlets and they all look fine to me. Does anyone have any idea what it could be?

There may be a loose connection at an outlet or a splice. Go to the closest live outlet and check the wiring connections. If you find the wires pushed into holes , then these connections are popular for loosening.

TK... thanks for the quick response. I did what you told me and I checked all the loose wiring in the live outlets... and no luck. I am a newbie so all of this is foreign to me.

My main question that has been bothering me... is when the other handyman was using the drill and the outlet tripped... how did he get the outlet working again if he didn't trip any of the breakers in the main box? Did I miss a breaker somewhere along the circuit?

This is a reach but I thought I would mention that once or twice I have seen a breaker trip without the visual indicator really showing it. If you havent' already, flip the breaker(s) off and back on just to make sure.