Recent MSN Upgrades Causing Modem Problems?

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?

Comments

XP

[josepha48]

I guess this is 'xtra protection' from hackers. Think about it, your computer must be safe if you can't get into it ;-)....

Tell your dad to make the switch and use Mac or Linux or anything other than XP. To all those windows XP fans, all I can say is I'm sorry, but I have heard NOTHING good about XP and this is just another nail in their coffin.