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modem problem

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by chancyjean

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I have a friend who has a dial up. Even though her internet connection was working fine, her phone was dead. (She knows not to be online and use the phone at the same time.) The phone company came to look at her phone and told her the problem was the pc. She has an adapter with a line from the pc and a line from her phone going into it. (I have the same setup.) When they took the pc line off, the phone worked fine. Whenever they place the pc line back in, the phone went dead. They said that the pc line might be shorting it. They said that the pc is causing the problem. This is the first time I have ever heard of this problem. If any of you know how to solve this, please help.

9 replies

by lizzy

This happens all the time and can be a few different causes. First, disconnect the PC and at the same jack that the PC uses, plug in a telephone that works. If you get dial tone ok, then you know it isn't that jack--if no dial tone there, but elsewhere without the PC plugged in, then it's the jack in the wall (this could be telco or customer responsibility depending on service contract). To prove it's the jack, take the PC and the patch cable it usually uses to another jack and try to get connected there.

If the PC jack works, then you need to eliminate the other possibilities. One is that the patch cable used to the PC is shorted out, so try the PC with another cable. The other is the modem in the PC and this can get complicated, butyou see where this is going. Either try another PC with a modem there or try another modem in the PC.

I have seen modems go bad when hit with power surges (lightening even when connected to surge protectors). If it's just the modem, your friendshould still consider herself lucky, because it could be the power supply or worse the whole system (which if the PC boots and works except for the dial up, you know where it's leading).

Make sure that the modem drivers are installed correctly and are the latest for her OS.

This should get you pointed in the right direction. Read my profile and you'll see that I worked for the telephone company. I have seen stuff like this all the time...

Hope this helps.

by thechas

In most modems, there is a relay that opens up the connection to the phone jack when you connect.

Since it sounds like you are connecting the only phone to the phone out jack on the modem, it is likely that this relay has failed.

A simple testwould be to pick up a dual phone jack adapter, and plug it into the phone jack on the wall.
Plug in the phone.
Check that the phone works,
Plug in the modem,
Check the phone again.

If the phone still works, the problem is the relay on the modem card.

If the phone is now dead, there is some problem with the modem.

You can continue to use the phone off of the splitter if this works.

The true "fix" is to replace the modem.

Chas

by enserng

May sound crazy, but when using dial-up, have seen the same thing happen with different PCs, modems, and locales. Only a once-in-a-while happening, so all that was ever needed was to reboot the PC or toggle the power switch on the external modem and there was no need to do any in-depth troubleshooting.

If the problem occurs more often, then would recommend looking into the modem, but other than that, never have had to do much else.

Hope this helps,

Nikk

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