Computer Woes...please help

[peoplemover]

Hi guys,

Well here's my story. Took the ol' Compaq Presario 4860 in to CompUSA on Saturday. They put in a 128MB RAM upgrade, so now I have 190-something MB of RAM in there. Good deal.

So I got back home and pulled out the brand new Windows98 upgrade software that I had bought. I did a clean install, and everything seemed to be going fine...until Windows98 decided that it didn't want to recognize my modem. What snobby hardware! Now the screwy thing is this. I have installed the correct drivers. They are all there. I can communicate with the modem, as in, I can get the version and such from the Control Panel>Modems section when I ask for "More...". My modem appears to be installed in COM Port 3. That may be the problem. So...I am stuck. I will probably end up taking the computer back tomorrow and see if the modem can't be moved to COM Port 1 or 2. Win98 doesn't seem to want to "see" anything past those 2 ports for dialing out. If that doesn't work...Yzma has some nice hammers in Emperor's New Groove, I could be persuaded to use one.

I am wondering what happens if the computer will not cooperate. I am extremely angry right now...if you guys could only see me. I have been working with my computer for around 5 hours. I finally quit a while ago and decided to watch some TV. I now find myself on my Dad's laptop trying to find a grain of help somewhere.

In case anyone can help me, My modem is a Zoom 56k PCI FaxModem, it is installed, but Windows98 won't recognize it at all. When I try to use a Dial-Up Networking shortcut, Win98 claims that my modem isn't configured properly or isn't installed at all, even when I have the Modems dialog boxes open on the screen where it says it is installed and in working order.

AARGH!

Please e-mail me if you can help me out in any way. I will have to take it back to CompUSA if I don't hear from anyone by tomorrow afternoon...they will probably have me pay out the nose too since I did not buy the computer or the modem there. But I absolutely refuse to go back to Best Buy after some VERY BAD experiences there...of course that is where my computer and this modem from heck came from.

I try to do nice things for my computer and look what it does to me.

 

[Eeyore's Pal]

Amy,

I'm sorry. My message will not give you any hope. I can only commisserate with you. I had a Zoom 56K PCI Fax/Modem and I never got it to dial out no matter what I tried. And that was on COM2 with Windows 95. A very "vanilla" configuration. I finally gave up.

So sorry.

 

[peoplemover]

THANK YOU for the words of support. I don't feel so bad now. I thought maybe it was just me doing something stupid and making it dysfunctional. The computer is now at CompUSA again (2nd time in 2 days). We are having the Zoom modem taken out and putting in a generic 56k modem. No bells, no whistles. $20 + free installation. This sounds much better to me than fighting with that modem again. When I did a Yahoo! search for help with my problems, the keywords "PCI Communication Device" and "modem not detected" came up a whole bunch of times...these are apparently very common problems with Windows 98 users. So, hopefully the pros over at the ol' tech upgrade counter at CompUSA can fix everything.

Good thing I don't have any trades pending right now or else I'd be in a pickle. All my trading information is on a Zip disk, which I can't install until I download the newest Iomega Tools software from the Iomega site, which I can't do because of the modem conflicts. It's the circle of life working (or rather, not working in my case). When I get that computer back and get everything working again (which should be by tomorrow night), I will be back to my old "trading maniac" self.

Until then, I get to use Dad's Dell Inspiron 7500 laptop for a little while. It's great, but it's hard to get used to the whole finger-controlled-pointing-device-thingy.