Windows 98 Modem Problems

[choppednscrewed]

The other day, I turned on my computer like i always do and I tried to connect to the internet and a window came up that said, "Unable to connect to modem hardware". I went through all my programs and didn't find anything until I went to the device manager tab. An AOL network adapter had a yellow question mark by it and normally I learned that if does that, to simply delete it and the problem would go away. Well this time it didn't and I 've rebooted the computer and everything and still no luck. So basically, I was wondering if anybody ever had this problem and do you guys think that the modem itself is just shot. O by the way, I haven't used AOL in 5 years but about 3 nights before the problem, I cleaned all my files and stuff out to get more drive space. l no problems connecting to the net or anything...thanks

[John Prophet]

Welcome to the forum!

AOL sucks bigtime....the way the hook to modems etc is scary....

what if you go into control panel....modems....click on "diagnostics"

highlight your modem..click on "more info"

what does that do? if it works there will be a window that pops up full of info....if not it will be an error message such as "cannot communicate with modem" or "port already opened" or such...

JP

[Bovon]

AOL messes with standard Windows operating system files. When AOL is discontinued, there is something former AOL members must do to get their system files back to something similar to a non AOL machine. I have read about this, but never having run AOL, I don't know from a personal point of view.

You may discover missing or corrupt files in the OS. Go to Start > Run and type sfc in the run window. This will start System File Checker (sfc) and it may find some bad files..have your Win98 install CD handy to extract a new copy if needed.

Run scandisk as well..if there is a read/write problem on your hard drive, scandisk may be able to fix it for you.

G/L

[John Prophet]

yeah..good idea..run "sfc"..choose "scan for altered files"...when it finds em you can replace em off the w98 disk ....(ignore "setupx.dll" cuz it always finds that one)

but it may also have to do with stuff in "dial up networking"

[Bill in SD, CA]

Additionally, you might want to download the latest drivers if you don't have them already and remove the modem in device manager, reboot, and reinstall.

Also the TCP/IP stack may be corrupted.

Delete and reinstall TCP/IP.

Bill

[Bovon]

Yep, you are correct concerning the TCP/IP stack.. I have had to do that a couple of times...

But, when you remove a device like a modem or sound from device manager and reboot..unless you have also removed the .inf file, Windows will automatically reinstall the device on reboot...took me awhile to figure that one out..or, you can also go to the device properties and search for updated drivers...and replace whats there that way...even if Windows says the drivers you want to replace are the best ones..choose replace anyway..because the wizard may not detect that the old drivers are corrupt (if they actually are).

[choppednscrewed]

Thanks for the quick replies. I'll try all of the ideas you given me and let you guys know what happened.