internet

[wesm]

ok so i deleted everything from my hard drive and then reinstalled a newer xp and everything was working fine until i tryed to connect my modem to the computer. i dont know what is wrong but i just dont know how to make my internet work, i think it is my ethernet driver, it needs to be installed or something, so i used the drivers disk that came with my computer and tryed to install the ethernet drive and i dont know what im doing wrong. Someone please HELP!!!!!!!!!!

[jholland1964]

Was this the modem which came with the computer or is this a new modem...or different modem?
Right Click My Computer and then choose Properties.
Once there go to the Hardware Tab and then Device Manager. See if there are any items noted with a yellow triangle?
You also say you installed a "newer XP" exactly what do you mean by this? Did the computer always have XP on it or have you updated from another operating system to XP?

[tweak-n-squeak]

Hello. I'm no experienced worker here, and don't know if any of this will help, but hopefully I might have a little light to offer for some insight.

If you mean you've loaded your Windows Operating System onto a wiped out and newly formatted hard drive, this might be the same problem we're having (and have been having for some time). Myself and my uncle have found that whenever starting from "scratch", loading the Win OS onto a new hard drive, we can get everything together but the modem. The infamous "plug and pray" (supposedly plug and play) never matches up the modem to the correct COM port. I'm suspecting comp manufacturers might have a default of one while Windows defaults to the other (like COM2 and COM1 - but never the same). Unc found the solution once, and didn't write it down... and with our many yardbirds, we're still having problems when we recycle the old comps. (I finally just got fed up and for one I kept, I just went out and bought an external USB modem and can attach it to anything and not bother anymore!) At least it's a good backup for the older dial-up connections later when a modem goes bad and you're in a crunch to get online.

Also, if this is a dial-up modem on an older machine, coming out of Taiwan where some badly manufactured capacitors that eventually suffered from bulging, rendering the modem useless and making it dangerous to the motherboard. Look at your capacitors if you have an older dial-up modem (the black tall "cans" with silver tops) - and if the modem says "Taiwan" and the little towers on top look like they're "overly-full popping up cans" or have brown stuff leaking out, that's a problem. I think these were manufactured around 2000-2002. If you notice this with your modem, remove it right away from your motherboard and keep it away! It's not a good thing.

One thing to consider, if you wiped out your modem driver, you might need a new one. If you don't have your installation disk for your modem, you might have success by getting the serial number off of it (literally) and see if you can find the matching driver for it (maybe at drivers dot com and go into the computer section). I don't know if that's free anymore. Still, when you get the correct driver no matter where you get it, the machine should be able to identify it.

Like jHolland is saying, look into your Device Manager and see if your modem is there. If your driver isn't matched up properly, after installing the newly found driver, delete the modem from the list, bring the system down and back up again, and upon bringing it up it should try and assign the new driver through plug and play. At least, if nothing else, it should ask you to identify it. Try to keep a written record of what the new driver file name is and if it doesn't work, you might want to do a search for the file and remove it. (Usually in the system folder.)

Anyway, we're here, ourselves, going to post how to assign a modem to Windows manually... and what's the secret?! (Must be a well-kept one.) If we can ever unlock the box, I'll check back by and see if the key fits. We're using older OS's, but hopefully it'll generally apply to your XP. ~ In the meantime, hope you get a fast fix!