Difficulty setting up Internet Connection

[sherwood]

I have a friend who spends 6 months in France and six months in the UK.  For the last two years I have been able to help her set up an AOL account in France when she comes here using an Olitech external modem.  (Yes I know that she can use her UK account with a French dial up number but for some reason she doesn't do that).  This year I cannot get the computer to recognise the modem and establish a connection.  She has changed her computer and this one runs Win Xp as the OS while the other used Win98.  I seem to remember having problems myself with dial up and Win XP with an Olitech external USB modem (before I had ADSL) and that changing to a Serial or Parallel port Olitech solved the problem.  Unfortunately no one seems to be selling anything but ADSL modems now so I can't verify whether that is true in this case. 

Can anyone in a similar situation throw light on this?

 

 

[Ecossais]

If your friend’s modem is an old one it may not support “plug and play”, so Windows will not detect and install it automatically.

 

How are you installing it?  Start | Control Panel | Phone and modem options | Modems | Add… | Try “Don’t detect my modem…..” | Have disk – (assuming she’s got the driver disk), and see if it will install that way.

 

It may be that the modem is not compatible with Windows XP.  If the PC is a desktop, a new internal modem card should be around £10-£15. 

 

However, I’m surprised the PC doesn’t have a built-in modem.  Every PC I have owned since the days of Windows 95 has had a modem fitted.  It’s something one takes for granted these days as they cost so little to fit at the manufacturing stage.

 

A new external modem would be in the region of £30-£40.

 

Have a look at http://www.dabs.com if you’re not near a PC shop.

[Deimos]

When I first moved to France, before ADSL was available in this area (a year and a half ago), I purchased an Olitec Speedcom V92 Ready USB modem and ran it under Windoze XP Pro. I did need the Olitec drivers loaded from their CD/website (i.e. windows did not include the necessary drivers).

There is a issue with the modem (or Espace Wanadoo) that causes the modem to “lock-up” every couple of days. The computer does not lock-up, just the modem components. When this happens everything continues to work except the modem. Unplugging it can crash the computer. When shutting down you get several (internal) processes that will not exit and then the shutdown never completes (just stays on “saving your settings”). On restarting you may then need to unplug and reconnect the modem. However, this “problem” is relatively rare and it works fine otherwise. Seems an OK modem. Certainly holds a line much better than a “Creative Labs” modem I had did.

Ian