Driver Updating

Hello,
I was told that my modem's drivers needed to be updated. I have a Motorola SM56 PCI Speakerphone Modem. I went online and downloaded the upgrade (at least I think that I did) and I tried to install it. I'm not sure that I did everything right though, because when I went back into control panel and checked to see (under diognostics) if anything looked different (the info) nothing did. Also I now have two phone icons on my desktop taskbar when there was only one before. Can I please get some help with this because my modem keeps hanging up on me. Sometimes when I'm online I'll get disconnected often, and not because of someone calling or anything like that. And also sometimes when I try to disconnect from the internet it won't disconnect and I have to restart the computer to get offline. So I was told that my modems drivers need to be upgraded, for these and other reasons (similar though). I would love to be able to upgrade the drivers myself so if I can get some help with this I'll be most grateful. Oh I use windows98. Also should I uninstall what I already did and if so how can I and be sure that i'm going about it the right way.

Thanking you in advance.
mich2mom:beginner

 

I would un-install the modem from the control panel.
Then reboot. Win98 should automatically detect the modem. Choose the 'have disk' option and direct it to the new driver. That *should* take care of your problem

Hex92

 

Hi Hex92,
Thank you for your post, but i'm not sure how I am to go about choosing the 'have disk' option and directing it to the new driver after I reboot.


mich2mom

 

Typically when installing new hardware the OS (operating system) will detect it when you boot the computer after adding the device (modem in your case).

A pop-up dialog box will appear and say something along the lines of 'windows has detected new hardware would you like to install it?' Answer yes.

The next box should say something along the lines of 'would you like to install the drivers yourself or have windows search for it?' Thats when you usually get the option of choosing 'have disk' and then you would browse to the location of the modem driver file (it should have a .inf extension). Hopefully you have saved the file somewhere on the drive that you can find it (I've been trying to explain how to do that to my mother for 3+ years )

Hex92

 

Hi mich2mom
How far can you get? Can you get as far as removing the modem and rebooting to see if your computer will recognize new hardware and find the driver itself?
Do you remember where you saved the updated driver to? Hex 92 seems to have you on the right path?

Daizy

 

Well Hex92, I did as you suggested and the computer recognizes the driver I installed now. Thank you heaps. But I'm still having the problem of being disconnected often (even when there is no interuption from a phone call). Also my connection keeps getting stuck, for example just tonight I was online then tried to disconnect and the thing refused to disconnect. The double computer icon on the desktop taskbar will just not go away. I tried right clicking it and pressed disconnect a few times and it would not disconnect. This has been happening for a while now and I thought that updating the drivers would help but it didn't. When this happens the only way it would disconnect is by my restarting the computer.
What may be the cause of this problem? Can I myself fix it.

Again thanking you in advance.

mich2mom

 

For your disconnect problems check your phone lines for noise. Dial just one number to get rid of the dial tone and then listen to the phone. If you here any noises (cracks, clicks, static, whatever) it will give you trouble. Call the phone company and have them fix it.
For the problem of it not wanting to disconnect, do you have Googles search tool bar installed? If so disable it and see if the problem goes away. I started having this problem about three weeks ago and I think it was the toolbar in IE that was causing it. I diabled it about a week ago and haven't had any problems since. Before that, it was a daily occurance. Long story how I tracked it to this so I'll not go there for now. I can't understand why it would give me trouble now as I've had I had it installed for well over a year with no trouble at all. Perhaps I'll try uninstalling and reinstalling it sometime.

 

Hi mich2mom
When you try to disconnect and can't? Do a ctrl/alt/del for us and list for us what's in that dialogue box please?

Daizy

 

Wouldn't you know it. I posted my previous message, messed around a bit more here and when I went to disconnect it wouldn't hang up. So much for my Google toolbar idea. Don't know if it's related or not (probably not) but this morning I had been experimenting a bit with nortons plugin for netscape in an effort to help on another post. It was previously disabled and I had enabled it and forgot to disable it again. Hmmm. Don't use Netscape so doubt that it is the cause but it sure makes me wonder. The plugin was enabled a while back but I'm not sure when I disabled it. Could have been about the time the problem went away though. It hasn't been all that long ago. Come to think about it, I unistalled and then reinstalled Norton AV a while back and that would have been about the time the problem started. I goofed during the installation and chose to enable it and didn't realize it until I was trying to help in the other post. Guess I'll disable it again and see what happens. Also, when trying to track this down I had tried starting the system with no programs loaded and it made no difference at all. Back to the drawing board!

 

Okay Zander,
I'll wait a bit to hear what you come up with .
And to Daizy I'll try what you suggested the next time it happens.

 

Well Daizy, since the last time I mentioned about not being able to disconnect when I try to hang up my online connection yesterday it happened again. So I took your suggestion and pressed Ctrl-Alt Delete and what I got was that box that had the options to end task, shut down or cancel, because it said that the program was not responding. So I pressed end task and then another box came up saying that the program may be busy or something like that and again giving me the option to shut down end task or cancel. So again I pressed end task and the thing disconnected but the I got an error message that the the program performed an illegal operation or something like and I clicked to close that and it froze.
Can this bit of info. help you help me? I await your or anyone elses reply

 

You left out the most important part.

What program was it that it said was not responding ?

Would I be wrong if I said I'll bet it was RNAAPP ?

If it was, I would believe you may need to remove and/or at least re-install Dial-up-Networking.

Also have you tried opening Dial-Up-Networking and making a new connection for your ISP ?

BillyBob

 

Hi BillyBob, sorry about that. The program that was not responding is my connection to my service provider(those who provide me with my dial up service). I hope that helps How can I re-install Dial up Networking if need be. I'm new at this

Thanks for your response.

 

OK. One more question or two ( or 3 )

Are you using software provided by Your ISP to connect to them ?

A LONG time ago when I was using ISP provided software, I also had nothing but problems.

Do you know how to open Dial-up-Networking from the control Panel, Right click on the connection for your ISP, vuew the various tabs and get the Info from it. If you can do this and write it down as to what and on which location it is in.

This may not be a DUN problem at all.

Let's see if we can get a new connection made and see what gives then.

BillyBob

 

BillyBob could be right. I had thought about trying it but haven't done so yet as I haven't had any problems since disabling the norton plugin. I'm sort of guessing that it probably isn't the source of my problem (nortons plugin) but I'm going to give it a few more days to see if I have it occur again or not. If not I'll enable the plugin again and see what happens. BillyBob; you're right about RNAAPP. I can kill it with TaskInfo 2000 but if I don't reboot RNAAPP will crash the next time you try to use it. Last week when I turned off the Google toolbar, it was because that's where RNNAPP crashed when I tried to dial up again and I thought perhaps it was an indicator of the problem. This last time it happened however, I never got the chance to try it. I killed RNAAPP and then clicked on the start button in the taskbar and instantly got the dreaded explorer crash at kernel32.dll. Managed to get things closed and reboot and haven't had a problem since, (been a few days now) so I don't know what to say about it. Guess I'll just stick to my plan for now and if that doesn't do it I'll try reinstalling DUN.

 

The case being that I have absolutely no idea what norton plugin refers to would you please help me out ?

I have seen mention of it before but never investigated further.

BillyBob

 

I was referring to the Norton Antivirus plugin for Netscape. Read my previous posts in this thread and I think you'll get my drift (hopefully) .

 

Did as suggested and have now got it. I think

Thanks