I have an ADSL connection on Windows XP. At one point when I turned on the computer, it would dial the ADSL connection directly. Now I need to do it myself. I put a shortcut to the ADSL connection in the Startup group, but all it does is present a window on startup, requiring me to press connect.
The password is saved, so it isn’t waiting for that.
I have a feeling if I put Outlook Express in my Startup group as well it will connect for me, but I would prefer not to start any other programs right away.
Get a linksys cable/dsl router. Set it to maintain the connection. It also gives you a pretty good hardware firewall and the abilty to network multiple computers to the net and each other.
I’m not interested in buying anything, let alone a router (for my house!), and I have a hard time believing I have to.
A few more notes:
a) Internet Explorer is set to “Always dial my default connection”. And indeed, after I start the computer, if I open IE it does dial the ADSL connection. But as I mentioned, I’m not really interested in having IE start every time I start the computer.
b) In Network Connections | Advanced | Dialup Preferences, Enable Autodial is marked.
c) In HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings , the key EnableAutodial is set to 1.
d) In HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Ole, the key EnableRemoteConnect is set to Y.
e) The service “Remote Access Auto Connection Manager” is set to Automatic, and is running.
it’s rather simple. there’s a setting somewhere for “do not show connect screen” or something to that effect. look either in dial-up networking settings or on the screen where you have to click connect; look on the bottom i think there’s a check mark for “don’t show this screen” or something. i don’t have a machine i can check on right now, but i know it’s there somewhere.
I’m running Windows 2000, but this solution should work for XP just as well.
I used notepad to create a short file called “connect.cmd”:
@echo off
rasdial <connection name> <username> <password>
The connection name is the name of the connection icon you normally run to connect to the internet as seen in Start/Settings/Network and Dial-up connections
Then I used the windows scheduler to run this file at system startup. My PC now connects to the internet whenever it’s booted up, even if I don’t log in to the console.