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Modem not hearing dial tone

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KiloZ

Technical User
Jul 10, 2004
48
US
My sister is having a problem with her dial-up modem. Here are the symptoms, info, and things that have already been tried:

Whenever she tries to connect to the Internet she double-clicks her dialer and after a few seconds she gets a warning popup that states the modem is waiting for a dial tone, so of course it never gets the chance to dail. My first thought was the obvious one, either the phone line is not connected properly or the phone line itself is bad. I had her, via telephone, double-check all phone line connections by unplugging and replugging them in; and also check to see if there was any moisture or dirt at the connections - all of that was done and no problems noted. So I asked her to swap the old phone cord out with a new one - she did and still no dial tone.
She then swapped her telephone over to use the same line as the modem, but the phone worked just fine - no noise on the line and certainly a good dial tone.
I verified with her that Device Manager doesn't show any conflicts and that it shows the proper modem - all of that showed to be normal. I then had her display the modem's properties; everything looked normal and good - we even had her query the modem and that worked just fine. Viewing the error log didn't show anything wrong; it showed the modem initializing and just waiting for a dial tone. I then had her, while I was still on the phone with her, to attempt to use the modem and dial up; I heard a small "click" as the modem initialized and then, of course, she got the same popup.
Her phone line, as well as her whole system, uses an UPS to protect her from power surges plus there hasn't been any storms in her area since yesterday - and her modem worked fine yesterday. There has been no software, hardware, or driver changes since yesterday either. Her OS is WinXP Pro.

Any suggestions? I'm at the end of my rope. If you need any more info let me know.


All great accomplishments were once considered impossible.
 
The only suggestion I have, is for your friend to try another modem...

if it's external it would be no problem what so ever... if it's an internal one... well...

Ben


If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer...
 
The modem is gone. This is a standard type of failure.
Everything that the mangler can test is on the computer side of the line. Dialtone and conversation are on the line side of the modem. The interface between them is what has broken.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.
 
Thank you both very much! I thought that it was likely that the modem was hosed, considering we tested everything that made sense to me to test, but I always consider that I might have over-looked something.

Thank you.

All great accomplishments were once considered impossible.
 
I do not believe that the modem is faulty. This is a common fault in windows. Romove the modem drivers and restart the machine. It will ask you on boot up for the driver CD insert the driver cd and it will reinstall. This fault is an error in the windows system which specially shows up with the Conextant chips. Good luck and regards.

Jurgen
 
It's also a classic symptom of a modem that has been struck by lightning.

Jim

 
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