On 19 May 2003, at 10:24, Eoin O'Driscoll wrote:

> hi list i have 2 problems on 2 different machines but i think its the same
> problem on both pc's.
> first machine is a pentium 3 with 500mhz,
> 128mb ram and win 98.
> there is a us robotics internal pci modem installed and i can dial up and
> get a connection nice and strong but i cant load a web page or bring in
> e-mail using outlook express,have tried several dial different dial ups but
> makes no difference.
>
> the second problem is a Pentium 4 laptop 2.4ghz and 256 ram, modem is on
> board , i dial up and get a good connection but cant load a web page or
> bring in mail has anyone got any ideas?

  There are at least three simple things that could cause this sort of
problem:

1.  When you dial up, your ISP should provide an IP address to use for this
session.
  a.  Your dial-up connection entry should specify "Obtain an address
automatically".  If it doesn't, that could be the problem.
  b.  This might be failing for some other reason.  Try "ipconfig /all" at a
DOS prompt after the modem connects and tell us what it says.

2.  Your ISP should also be providing the address of one or two DNS servers
to use to translate Internet host names to IP addresses.
  a.  Your dial-up connection entry should specify to get this
automatically, too.  If you assign it statically, it might be wrong.
  b.  I've had wierd DNS issues when I used to run Win2K in a dual-boot
configuration.  Open a DOS window and try "ping www.yahoo.com" -- if it sits
for a bit and then reports "Unknown host", then DNS name resolution is not
working.

3.  When I was on Earthlink, and they were heavily loaded, I would sometimes
get a successful modem connection but no/intermittent Internet routing.  If
the first two check out okay, we can try to determine if that's what you're
running into.
  But it sounds like you're having problems all the time, so it's probably
not this issue.

David Gillett

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