[elvin]

My friend, a little old lady in her 70s, recently got fed up with Qwest's high prices for telephone service. So when a Comcast salesman came to the door and offered her a TV+telephone bundle she said yes. Unfortunately, she forgot that she uses dial-up to connect to her ISP (toast.net), so when the Qwest service went away, so did her internet. She doesn't want and can't afford Comcast broadband internet.

When she called me for help I took a 25-foot telephone cord and plugged her computer (Dell Dimension 2400 with an Intel 537EP V9x DF PCI modem) directly into the phone jack of the RCA/Thomson DHG535-2 modem provided by Comcast. Using the dialer provided by toast.net it connected just fine. Until the next day. Since then it has only connected intermittently, and rarely.

The dialer gives one of two error messages: the phone line is in use or no dial tone. I have tried setting the modem to not wait for a dial tone, but it doesn't make any difference.

What perplexes me is that it works fine, when it works, but most of the time it won't work at all.

Anybody have any idea where the problem may lie? Thanks.