Hmmm... sorry to hear about the lack of ability of your local geeks. May they rot in stale mountain dew and moldy pizza...
Now, for this machine... methinks your problem will lie in one of a couple of areas: either the modem itself or some internal settings.
A couple of things to get started:
1. What OS are you running?
2. What are the physical specs of the machine? CPU, memory, virtual memory settings, drive space, etc.
3. When they upgraded you, what exactly did they do?
4. Is your modem internal or external?
5. Can you wipe the machine and start over without feeling bad about it?
A couple of things come to mind...
1. Try another modem. Borrow one from someone else (preferably an external one) and see how it works.
2. Do a full scan with Spybot, Ad Aware, HiJack This, Trend Micro, and any thing else that feels good [img]smile.gif[/img]
3. Completely delete all your dial-up networking configurations, reboot, and re-enter them. Be sure to write down the details first... and don't restore any that you don't know that you need.
4. A repair installation of your OS may help... but that's just a short distance from a reinstall, which is usually more effective.
As far as the tech-savviness needed for working on your machine, it's really not that bad. Give me a shout if you've got questions... I really can't make it much worse
