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Recent MSN Upgrades Causing Modem Problems?

Posted by Cliff on from the here-there-be-gremlins dept.

swm asks: "My father-in-law runs Windows/XP on a low-end machine. He gets internet access through MSN over a 56K dialup. This worked OK for many months. Two or 3 weeks ago, MSN presented him with an auto-upgrade, and he clicked OK, and the system has been virtually unusable ever since. I booted the machine to see what it does. First, it thinks he is on a LAN (he isn't) and presents a window telling him it can't connect to the internet and he should disable his firewall. I dismiss that window. A few seconds later another window pops up and tries to dial out. I can cancel and close the dial-out window, but it just comes back in about 15 seconds and starts dialing out again. No matter how many times I cancel and close the dial-out window, it just keeps coming back. I reboot the machine and let it dial out. It connects to MSN. I click the 'Offline' button, but it doesn't drop carrier. I shut down the machine and it still doesn't drop carrier. Finally I pull the power cord out of the wall socket and it drops carrier. I've checked msn.com and Googled around a bit, and I can't find any mention of problems like this. Does anyone have any idea what is going on?" Have any MSN users experienced this problem? What have you done in your attempts to solve it?

7 of 63 comments (clear)

  1. FP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Try removing the drivers and reinstalling the modem. Also, try dialing to another provider.

  2. weird by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    but i think we like AOL now.

  3. Windows XP and 40 GB HDDs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    I had hard time installing windows XP on 40 GB hdd. Everytime it gives operating system missing error message. Lot of people had the same problems. The MS techsupport is clueless (here). I gave up and installed XP on 4 GB Harddrive.

    1. Re:Windows XP and 40 GB HDDs by GreyWolf3000 · · Score: 1, Offtopic

      I've had the same symptom (back when I used Windows; 98 I think). Maybe the partition wasn't set as "active" or "bootable" in fdisk or something.

      --
      Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
    2. Re:Windows XP and 40 GB HDDs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      Depending on how you initally boot, the windows installer can only address up to 12 GB.

    3. Re:Windows XP and 40 GB HDDs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      There is a long list of things people asked to checked me starting from Bios version to bootable disk to making it slave etc. But it didn't work. I tried installing it on another 40 GB HDD but no use. Then I changed mother boards no use.

    4. Re:Windows XP and 40 GB HDDs by richi · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Your bootable partition shouldn't be bigger than 8GB.