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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?

4 of 63 comments (clear)

  1. Have you called MSN? by Numeric · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If MSN created the problem, maybe they can also address it.

    --
    -- ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space!
  2. WTF? by balog · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Has ask slashdot turned into a fscking software problems/bug report board?

    Ask the fucking support department of MSN for god's sake.

    Please be a little more selective; job ads, hormones, wtf news for nerds? - you're better than this guys...

  3. Red herring? by kawika · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's also entirely possible that the MSN upgrade has nothing to do with this problem. It sounds like some piece of software is insisting on an Internet connection. This is very common with many viruses and spyware that wants to phone home. Have you checked for viruses and spyware? If your dad installed syware like Gator you could see this behavior, for example.

  4. Setting up a Manual Connection by alatesystems · · Score: 5, Informative

    When I worked for Best Buy and we sold this crap, I would just uninstall the software from the user's computer and make a manual connection through dial-up networking. Another poster mentioned this, but I'll tell you how to go about it.

    Since MSN shares their access lines with other ISPs you have to specify which you are using by doing the following.

    Use for the username: MSN/username
    and then the password is the same
    And of course, the access # you can get from the software itself or by going to msn.com and looking up access numbers in the search box.

    So once again to recap:
    Phone #(access #)
    username: MSN/username
    password: password

    Chris
    www.talkingtoad.com