Reply #5: Sorry about the reflexive response... [View All]

[BlueHandDuo]

...but after I posted, it occurred to me that those kinds of port conflicts were pretty much limited to the DOS/Win 3.x platform. Win98 does a good job of sorting out those things during installation.

However, a flicker of an almost-kinda-memory-like thingy woke up in my head. It's been a long time since I've used AOL, but I seem to recall that at least one version of their software was hard-coded to look for the modem on a specific COM port, and woe to you if your modem was installed and working perfectly with everything else on a different port.

I have no idea what files come with a typical AOL installation these days, so I'm afraid I can't just tell you to fire up Notepad and change one character in some .INI file. You may just have to bite the bullet and call tech support, as the other person suggested.

Oh, one more suggestion: if you have fax or phone-answering software on the same machine, you may have to disable it (temporarily) before trying to dial with the AOL software.

But there's almost no chance at all that the modem itself went bad.