System hangs with dial-up modem

  • Thread starter Thread starter Fredel
  • Start date Start date
F

Fredel

What would cause my Dell running Windows XP Home
Edition to hang when I access the Internet via
dialup modem?

When I connect my Dell Dimension 8300 to a LAN via
the internal 100Mbit NIC and then access Windows
Update, it runs beautifully.

When I take it home and connect via the internal
data/fax modem, the system always hangs when
Windows Update scans to 66%. I then have to
power-cycle the machine. It will also hang when
I access other Internet sites, but hanging with
Windows Update is the easiest to reproduce.

Just before the system hangs, the cursor sticks
for seconds at a time when accessing Web pages
in IE.

I see this behavior whether I use AT&T or
Earthlink as my dialup ISP.

I have a Windows 98 Sony VAIO that has no problems
accessing the Internet via the same phone line and
the same AT&T ISP.

I'm new to Windows and PCs (I have a UNIX background).
Where do I start looking for solutions?

Fred
 
: What would cause my Dell running Windows XP Home
: Edition to hang when I access the Internet via
: dialup modem?

: When I take it home and connect via the internal
: data/fax modem, the system always hangs when
: Windows Update scans to 66%. I then have to
: power-cycle the machine. It will also hang when
: I access other Internet sites, but hanging with
: Windows Update is the easiest to reproduce.
: the same AT&T ISP.
snip

: I'm new to Windows and PCs (I have a UNIX background).
: Where do I start looking for solutions?

: Fred

Hi Fred--I just recently acquired a Dell laptop with XP Home, and had
problems when I switched to using dialup instead of my DSL or
wireless connections. In my case I found that some of my networking
clients needed to be disabled for XP firewall thruput when working
on the dialup TCP/IP connection. They remain enabled for network
clients, but I disabled them for dial up. I also found that my NAV
hangs the system when selected to scan all incoming email. The same
version of NAV works flawlessly on the same ISP server on my other
machines running Win 98.

A useful thing I stumbled onto was that I was able to cut and paste
Windows error messages with their inscrutable Hex values into
Google and was successful in a search for a translation to english.

Finally, some of the updates are humongously large--I'd try to do them
somewhere with a faster connection.

Best wishes--Steve
 
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