Harman Kardon AVR320 going into standby for bizarre reasons

[mlove29]

For those who like an intriguing problem, please read on. My HK receiver, about 6 years old, started popping into standby mode. It started randomly (about once a day), but once it started, turning the receiver back on would cause it to pop off again after a couple minutes. It's at the point now where it goes into standby after being on for just 10 seconds. I decided to unplug various speakers to see if it would stay on without a specific input, output, or speaker. As it turns out, only when everything was disconnected from the back did the AVR stay on. I further noticed that if I touched even one connector to the external shielding of the AVR, it would immediately switch into standby. I thought the AVR was shot, so I ordered a new one. However, since just touching the outside shielding of a connector was forcing the AVR to shut down, this did not make sense to me, so I decided to try to narrow it down further. After a long process of elimination, I discovered that only systems that are in some way connected to my digital cable shielding (Cable box, Tivo, VCR, etc.) would shut down the AVR if I touched a video or audio connector from them to the shielding of an AVR connection point. In fact, if I disconnect my cable from my whole setup, the AVR actually works fine. If I touch the external shielding of my digital coax cable to the HK chassis, it immediately shuts down. I'm having a hard time rationalizing what could be occurring here to cause the AVR to go into standby mode, but the cause is scientific fact (the shielding on the coax cable from the cable company). Anyone have any ideas??? The HK does not have a grounding wire. Would it help if I grounded everything (the cable shielding, the HK chassis, etc.)???