XP with SP2 installed - Unable to add modem

[Graeme Nichols]

Hello Folks, I'm not sure if this is simply an XP Home problem or an SP2
problem or a hardware problem but I have a Medion Titanium MD 8083
computer a month or so old. It came with a plethora of SW installed
including TV and Radio tuners and an internal fax modem. It has one
external serial port to which I want to attach a 3Com U.S.Robotics 56K
Voice Faxmodem. If I attach the modem to the external serial port, Com1,
and try and install it I am not allowed to proceed past the screen on
the wizard which asks to which port I want to attach it. The 'next'
button is greyed out. If I attach it and then boot XP the modem is
correctly recognised and installed and then within a few seconds of
finishing booting XP shuts down on its own. If I simply turn off the
modem without disconnecting XP will boot OK, and stay up

U.S.Robotics have been completely useless. Simply will not answer emails
for assistance or an XP driver and their web site only has drivers for
95/98 (which is what I have on the modem's driver disk)

Has anybody experienced similar problems with trying to add an external
modem? Any advice gratefully received.

 

[Chuck]

You may need to disable the internal fax/modem. This may be both a driver
and a hardware issue, if the internal modem cannot be disabled in BIOS or
with a Jumper. Generally, the external fax/modem from USR can be installed
as a general fax modem without external drivers. That is why USR does not
have the driver you were looking for on thier website. Internal modems that
are considered "soft" modems use a fairly complex driver that can really
screw things up.

 

[Graeme Nichols]

You may need to disable the internal fax/modem. This may be both a driver
and a hardware issue, if the internal modem cannot be disabled in BIOS or
with a Jumper. Generally, the external fax/modem from USR can be installed
as a general fax modem without external drivers. That is why USR does not
have the driver you were looking for on thier website. Internal modems that
are considered "soft" modems use a fairly complex driver that can really
screw things up.

Thanks Chuck, the internal modem is sure to be winmodem (driver replaces
the hardware) and the USR modem works just fine under Linux. I tried
disbling the internal modem in the BIOS but that didn't work. I then
'removed' it from the system (Modem setup in the Control Panel) and
tried again to install the USR modem but I still got the same problems.
I will try and disable it in the hardware list (whatever it is called)
and try again to install the USR modem.

Thanks again, Graeme.