Modem recognized and diagnostics fine -- but no dial tone!

[Woodcycl]

I fdisk'd, reformatted, and reloaded Win98se on a friends computer recently. All is well with exception to the Modem communication.

I installed a USRobotics Winmodem (internal) and loaded the drivers (from Win98 CD). The 'diagnostics' tab shows communication was successful, but there is no dial tone. He bought a brand new internal modem, installed it, and the same problem occurred.

Any ideas? I've been a cable modem user now for 3 years and have been away from Modem troubleshooting too long to know the tricks of the trade in this area.

Thanks for your help,
Brian

[muchmark]

I would start in safe mode, go to device manager remove all modems. Restart let Windows detect new modem only this time install drivers that came with modem not the Windows drivers. If its a Winmodem make sure its not on COM5 for some reason this type of modems want to go to that port.

[Bovon]

Well, my first suggestion may sound kinda foolish, especially sence two modems have been tried...but, is there a possibility the cable from the telephone outlet to the computer is being connected to the 'line' socket, and not the telephone socket?. All modems have two sockets that I am aware of, one says line, the other says telephone. If the line is plugged into the telephone socket on the modem instead of line..it will not get a dial tone...at least when I did that a few years back, that was the error...no dial tone.

Other things to try, plug a telephone into the line where the cable from the modem is normally plugged into..see if you actually get a dial tone to the phone. Try a different cable from the modem to the wall.

Has anything changed in the phone line setup recently?...one time I ran a new phone line to serve my computer when I moved it to another room, and got the wires crossed up. There is a red, green, yellow and a black wire in the cable. In the US, for a home type private line, we only use the red and green...if these get crossed up during a new install, the modem probably will not get a dial tone.

[rlpos]

My experience is usually if the modem dosen't detect the dial tone that it is probabaly defective. Check the phone line for a dial tone at the same plug you are plugging the modem into. and Has there been any lightning in the area as a small surge can generally fry a modem

[DaveJH]

I have had similar problems in the past - you could try checking your Com port settings to ensure no conflicts.
I have even had to disable a Com port in the BIOS before now to prevent conflicts.

[Bellbus]

It's probably a duff modem as previously stated.

However, I've had the same problem once before with a software modem. It was caused because I installed the drivers during the Plug N Play on boot up (by manually pointing to the files on the CD). But to get rid of the problem I also had to run the Modem Setup software on the CD which had some extra files to be installed (not the Comms package, but the CD came with a Autorun program menu that was to install the modem).

[Infragrrl]

Another slightly unorthodox issue.

I know this has probably been checked but does the person have call answer? and messages waiting to be picked up? This creates a different dial tone which most modems will not recognize as a dial tone.

Try putting X3(to ignore dialtone) as an init string and make sure that the modem is trying to pick up the line.

[Kurylo]

I know this problem. My friend had such. Nothing helps.

[RayH]

My experience with WinModems is that they like to be autodetcted. They will seemingly install if not autodetected. But won't work. Uninstall the modem. Turn off the computer. Move the slot and reboot!

[Woodcycl]

It ended up being a switch in the bios that allows plug-n-play to be used. Even though Windows detected it....the bios wouldn't allow it. Seems odd that Windows didn't detect a dial-tone due to the bios setting. But, after changing the setting...it works. Thanks for all the ideas.

Brian