PC hangs when using dialup connection 1

[snowball7]

When I am using my dialup connection my PC hangs, freezes, locks up; whichever you want to call it. Neither the keyboard nor mouse will function. It is not working on something, I have left hung it for 2 hours to verify it was not a processing hold. My only option is to press the reset button.

This happens randomly. I have not found a way to cause it to happen on demand. I run a dual boot Win 98 and Win 2K pro. I have used Outlook, OE5.5. OE6 and Opera. It happens irrespective of any of these. It happens seconds after clicking on connect and after being online for hours. It may happen several times in a row or not for several days.

Possible contributing factors:
I have a slow connection. I have 9 miles of wire between me and the ISP. It seems to be related to simultaneous download/upload transactions and getting hit with a bunch of popups.

Hardware:
Via Tech AK75-EC mainboard; 1300 mhz AMD Duron processor; 256 k RAM; AOpen FM56 PLM modem; Maxtor 40 gig HD.

I have contacted AOpen and at their suggestion swapped the modem for a known good one (my dealer swapped mine for a new one he tried in his PC for several days.), moved it to a new pci slot, removed and reloaded newest drivers and for other reasons, formated my HD and reloaded everything from scratch.

Any Ideas.

Snowball7

 

[trevm]

Have you checked out the IRQ the modem is using. Is it sharing an IRQ address with another device such as the graphics card. If it is sharing then it may be worth trying to move it to another IRQ

 

[AndrewRW]

Have you plugged a handset into the line and listened for line noise...might cause a slow connection...don't know about the lock-up, but perhaps retraining/errors are causing it due to line noise (wild guess). Don't know where you are, but in Australia, the phone company can run diagnostics to see if it's a line problem and will fix it if they're able. Have you installed the latest motherboard driver? Checked for conflicts?

Here's a troubleshooter site that may help:

http://808hi.com/56k/tshoot.htm

 

[snowball7]

AndrewRW I've done all that. Been fighting this for almost a year. I'm in Missouri USA.

trevm: You may be on to something. I checked and my modem, video controller,audio controller and USB controller all use IRQ 11.
It appears that IRQs 2,3,7,9,10,12 and 13 are free. In Admin tools (Win2K)/---/hardware resources/IRQ's all the others show as used.
How do I change one? I tried through Device manager but no luck. Which one is best to change if it makes a difference?

This is the best lead I've had. Thanks

 

[snowball7]

Thanks to all.
I have resolved my problem. I bullied my local pc store owner into replacing my modem again. Switched from an AOpen to a Wincom V.92. It hasn't froze up once in the last week.