Hi All

Trying to get my old man sorted out online. He's got a P2 machine running Win98SE, fine for his needs. Everything seems fine with the machine and it's internal 56Kflex modem, it connects to any ISP at 4600bps - obviously far too slow to be useable. I know the phone line and extension lead are fine because I've tried a laptop on them and they connect at around 50000bps.

Any ideas what to try? Surely if the modem was dead it just wouldn't work. I haven't been able to find a new driver online for this brand of modem. When I try to uninstall and reinstall with a generic Windows modem driver, the installer wont give COM3 (where the modem is) as an option for its location, so I can't install it. When I reboot Windows finds the modem and automatically installs it and finds the drivers.

I'll try the machine with an external modem later today, any ideas what else to try?

Cheers,

Ben

 

it's just one of those things, a 56k modem doesnt give you 56k connection!

 

You can try fiddling with the windows registry this often has success in tweaking up the connection speed or download something like this to do it for you.

http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.php

 

It can vary each time you dial up and is also dependent on ISP - 4600 isnt that bad on a 56k line - sometimes I had less than this with AOL!!

Having switched to Pipex at £23 a month for 512k I wouldnt look back!

 

thats bt for you.i'm afraid...

disconnect and retry, it might get slightly better.

or tell everyone in the area to get off the phone...

BB

 

ask them to turn the gain up on your phone line.... worked for me whan I was on dire-up

 

Are you saying with the same phone line, your dads pc connects at 4.6Kbps and using your laptop you get 50Kbps?

It might be the modem, a flex modem was pre v90 standard like the x2. A firmware upgrade might be possible or just go and buy a new modem.

 

Thanks for the replies guys.

4600 bits per second, not bytes per second; it really is unusable.

I suspect you're right about the modem HHxx, although I know in the past it has given reasonable speed. Even my old 28.8kbps modem gave much better performance back in the day. I've got a 56k V92 external modem to try this evening; if that makes no difference I'll try the registry tweeking program, thanks Chris.

Cheers,

Ben

 

defo fone up BT and said you are getting a slow connection and they do something to "improve" the line.

 

Turning the GAIN up via BT fault reporting is good practice. This problem can be caused by another device on the line too; my fax machine kills dialup, 300 byters per second is common.

You should always plug the modem directly into the master socket too; where the cable enters the house. Modem connection problems are a nightmare to diagnose remotely..........

Simon

 

Thanks again.

The machine connects at a reasonable speed (45000bps ish) with an external modem, so I presume it must be the internal modem (or its driver) that is at fault. V92 PCI modems are under a fiver on ebay so I'll give a new one a try seen as searching for drivers for the current one has been fairly fruitless.

Got another machine to sort out its modem bother too. It has worked fine in the same location before. Now the modem says "no dial tone" when the line and extension are fine for voice calls, forcing the modem to dial without checking for a dial tone would get it to connect but no data would transfer. Need to do some more fiddling with that one before I post for some more assistance!

Cheers

 

Are BT quite happy to do this? May have to give it a go!.