Please Help! Windows XP 56k modem problem

[Princeman]

My sister in PA called and has XP home edition and aol. It worked fine last week (as fine as a 56k and aol can work). Now when she enters her password and tries to connect, she gets a message that aol cannot initialize her modem. The thing worked one day but not the next, the phone line has a dial tone, but she doesn't hear the modem calling chatter. This gets worse, I live hundreds of miles from her. I told her not to change anything, but she tried adding adding new dial in numbers. What to do? Delete Reload AOL from aol cd?
Use system restore? (I don't have experience with XP and don't know how to use system restore, but can relay step by step to her and have seen it on Windows Millenium.) Thanks for any suggestions, hate giving a repair shop a ton of money for nothing.

 

[GAZZA]

You could start by trying to test the modem out , goto the modem properties and get XP to run the diagnostic test on it to see that it not only detects the modem but checks out the protocols.

If it returns the usual AT @@+#$ strings then try uninstalling the modem and rebooting ,letting windows install it.

If still no go then uninstall AOL and reboot and installed AOL once again.

 

[Princeman]

Thanks Gazza! If I delete the modem from System Device Manager (does XP even have this?) and restart Windows and let Windows install it again, wouldn't I have to delete/reinstall AOL to get their initialization string installed?

 

[GAZZA]

I'm not sure on how AOL initializes a modem but if XP installs the modem then it should be exact duplicate of what was originally installed .

AOL should see the exact same modem in it's listing for utilizing as a dialup connection .

Modem can be found in your device manager just like any other Windows Operating System , in XP right click "My Computer" and select "Properties" then select "Hardware" , then "Device Manager" .