My MSN dial-up service used to be solid as a rock – I enjoyed hours and hours of an uninterrupted connection. But for the past 3 or 4 weeks, I can barely stay connected for an hour. What gives? Is the fault with my PC, or MSN, or my phone company, or some other source? What should I do about it?
My apologies if this is a laughably simple question, but I’ve never encountered this problem before, so I don’t know the answer.
Well, I am by no means one of those techy people that know things, but I did recently have a similar problem and it was my phone line. I had noticeable static on the line and it eventually got so bad I couldn’t hear anyone and then the line went dead. Before it got that bad my connection was very unstable. It was the fault of my outside phone line and the phone company repaired it and it’s fine now.
So, do you have any static on the line when you use the phone?
I was having the same problem. The phone company checked it, agreed there was a problem and did some repairs on the outside line.
So far, so good.
To second John C of M, I had the same problem a while ago. It was to do with the connecting line having twisted and been trodden on. My connection dropped out constantly. A quick simple replacement line fixed it completely.
The two most likely causes are the provider’s equipment, or the phone company’s equipment. Call your provider and let them know the problem exists. They don’t fix, what they don’t know is bad. They determine if their equipment works, and if needed have the phone company check into their equipment. They might have you go through a modem connection diagnostic also. It could be you equipment. The most common reasons for bad connections for me have boiled down to the following over the years. The telephone company didn’t connect a third of the lines going into the providers modem bank correctly and you got dead air. The providers server was going bad. The providers software on the server was set up wrong. A bad relay in the phone company equipment. I always ask later what was wrong for a persistant problem. Report the problem and conditions of the failure like it happens between 7:00 to 9:00 everyday. Record the pop up message when it disconects. Once again call them and report the problem. Many times I was the first person to call them and I had problems for a couple days.