[Cerek]

Originally posted by Bungleau: [QB] 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? XP Home Edition 2. What are the physical specs of the machine? CPU, memory, virtual memory settings, drive space, etc. Don't really know how to give you all the physical specs. I have a 120gb HD. Don't know precisely how the memory is allocated, but that shouldn't be a problem. 3. When they upgraded you, what exactly did they do? I originally just wanted to upgrade the HD from 40gb to 120gb. When it was all said and done, however, they also installed a new DVD drive, a new motherboard and I'm pretty sure I got new modem also. IIRC, the only thing they didn't end up replacing was the CDWR drive and the Floppy drive. Thay also added a lot of software I didn't ask for (such as Belarc, Pop-Up Stopper, and some others. I have a sneaking suspicion the problems I had after my initial visit are a result of the stuff they added). 4. Is your modem internal or external? Internal. 5. Can you wipe the machine and start over without feeling bad about it? I've given that some very serious thought. My wife even suggested wiping it without saving ANYTHING and just starting with a brand new, fresh-installed machine. I'm hoping to avoid that if possible, but that may end up being my final solution. 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. Well, the modem certainly wasn't a problem before. I've had the machine for 2 years now and had no problems with it until this past summer. I had used up almost ALL of the 40gb HD space and the machine started "freezing" when I tried to play BGII. I thought I just needed more memory, so I went in to upgrade to the biggest available HD at the time. When I got my machine back and tried to play BGII again, the machine wouldn't freeze - it would actually "blink" and REBOOT completely. It did this every single time I tried to play the game. So again, I think it is something THEY did, but they said *I* had changed the settings and messed the machine up. I still had to pay for the hardware they installed, but I refused to pay for the labor involved. Needless to say, they are "on my list" now. 2. Do a full scan with Spybot, Ad Aware, HiJack This, Trend Micro, and any thing else that feels good [img]smile.gif[/img] Haven't heard about Trend Micro, but the others are S.O.P. for me. Still, it can't hurt to try again. 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. What details are you talking about that I need to write down? 4. A repair installation of your OS may help... but that's just a short distance from a reinstall, which is usually more effective. Yeah, it does look like I'm just going to have to do a fresh install and be done with it. [img]graemlins/verysad.gif[/img] 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 Thanks for your help. BTW, I had to redial my connection twice while typing this response.