Computer Problem

My computer keeps trying to answer the damn phone; I don’t know why this is. When I pick up the receiver after the computer answers, there’s a bunch of hissing and other noises, akin to dialing up to an ISP. How can I stop my computer from doing this?

Need a bit more info, but it seems you have one of a few things going on. Either you have enabled it as a dial-up server, or you have phone-answering software installed, or you have fax software set to receive faxes. Has it always done this or did it start recently? Did you buy it new or secondhand?

It’s a fairly new computer, but this is a recent problem. I have no phone answering software, nor am I using any fax programs. Hell, most of the time, there aren’t any programs running in the background when it happens.

I found this in Windows XP Help:

To make an incoming network connection
Open Network Connections.
Under Network Tasks, click Create a new connection, and then click Next.
Click Set up an advanced connection, and then click Next.
Click Accept incoming connections, click Next, and then follow the instructions in the New Connection Wizard.

That’s how you make your PC answer incoming calls. I didn’t look, but I imagine once you get to Network Tasks, you’ll see how to make it stop if, as I suspect, this is the cause of your problem.

Assuming you are using Win 9X, your modem is probably set to auto answer. Run regedit.exe and go to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/System/Currentcontrolset/Services/Class/Modem/0000/Init

This is where the initialization string for your modem is stored. There will be a key with a long string of text that starts with “AT”. Look in that string of characters for “S0=” (thats S Zero). The S0 register is where the modem stores its autoanswer info. If S0 isn’t set as “S0=0”, set it as such. That will turn your modems auto-answer to off. You will have to reboot for this to take effect.

This is only one thing that could be causing it. You really should post a little bit more info about your machine if you want help with it. You could be using a Mac, for all I know.

Joey G
BBS sysop for years, Hayes AT command set guru

Maybe its trying to connect to the net to activate your software?

Once the modem has received an auto answer string (ATA - I think) it will remain in auto answer mode until it has been reset. So checking settings as others have recommended and reboot. If it still happens then some software is running at startup to set it to auto-answer mode.

How exactly do I deactivate auto-answer? I tried the “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/System/Currentcontrolset/Services/Class/Modem/0000/Init” thing (I have XP), but I was missing a couple of the dirs mentioned. I also checked the modem settings, but found nothing that sounded like auto-answer.

Are you sure it’s answering, and not, as handy suggested, dialling out? There are nefarious pieces of software that automatically dial you up to international numbers.

What version of Windows are you using? You didn’t mention if you tried my suggestion above.

Well, what I posted won’t work with XP, so disregard.

I’m using XP…I did try most of what you said, but I was unable to find anything that wouold fix my problem.

Okay, here’s what to do:
Go to Start>Control Panel>Phone and Modem Options. Select the modems tab, highlight your modem in that list, and hit properties. Select the Advanced tab, and you should see a line to add initialization commands. Add “S0=0” (those are zeros) on that line, and hit okay a couple of times. Reboot.