Modem not conecting

[Jon]

Hi.
I have 1 XP Pro workstation with an external modem
accepting incoming calls
from 15 remote laptops for file sharing etc.
Two of the laptops both running XP home can not connect.
The other 13 are a mixture of 98, XP home and XP pro and
are all fine.
The 2 that do not connect dial go through the screeching
modem noise for
about 60 seconds then disconnect with the message "the
computer you are
dialling is not responding".
I have tried using the internal modem a USB modem and an
external serial
modem on both of these laptops to no avail they all act
the same.
The XP Pro workstation has had a new external modem same
result.
But with this answering to 13 of the 15 I can only assume
it is the 2
laptops not the workstation.
All updates and service packs are done.
Any ideas.
Thanks.
Jon.

 

[allan grossman [mvp]]

Hi, Jon -

This is most likely a hardware problem, I'm afraid. I
work for the federal government and we bought a whole
pile of laptops that were incompatible with the Cisco
dialup server in the basement.

What happened is the dialup server in the basement
absolutely would not talk to the spiffy new v.92 modems
in the laptops and I suspect the same thing is going on
here. It's a bit strange, but the v.92 modem protocol
doesn't seem to be as compatible with earlier stuff. We
ended up spending a buncha tax dollars on a new dialup
server and came up with a *really* short list of modems
you could use to connect to it.

You probably need to get someone to physically look at
your network - and if it were me I'd ask for someone with
strong modem skills as this is becoming a lost art :-(

The answer may be to lock the laptop modems in v.90 mode
(if possible), replace the modem in the XP Pro machine
with something that's v.92 compatible or a combination of
the two. I'm afraid you're probably gonna have to get a
network engineer to get his hands on your network to make
the laptops connect.

Sorry I didn't have better news -

 

[Guest]

Thanks for that but having tried 3 different modems in
the laptops one v92 two v90 and two modems on the desktop
i think it is XP somewhere.
But i will keep trying .
Cheers.
Jon.

 

[allan grossman [mvp]]

I don't think you're gonna find this is an XP issue, but
you're welcome to try anything you like, of course - I'm
just trying to save you a little time ;-)

The modems timing out without a successful hardware
handshake doesn't have anything to do with the operating
system, Jon. What it means is the two modems couldn't
agree on a common protocol to communicate. This can be
because of less-than-optimal phone lines, a bad
initialization string on the modem or incompatible
hardware.

If your hardware was detected correctly the modem init
string was supplied by the hardware manufacturer but can
be altered if necessary. I still think it's time for
someone to have a look at your network - one thing you
can try is to force the laptop modems to communicate at
say, 28.8k (v.34) just to see if they'll connect if v.92
is disabled.

In short, what's happening is Windows passes control of
the connection to the modems - which cannot find a common
protocol to connect.

Good luck!