modem issue w/ no dial tone

[crazyspider]

I have an issue with a customers modem(s). At her house, when she attempts to dialup, she gets a no dialtone error 680. This seems to happen with any modem we place in the machine. Here at the shop the modem will connect just fine. I have tried some of the obvious fixes that i could think of at the time. (removed line splitters, phones, faxes, etc). Finally I connected a line directly to the outside box to rule out a wireing issue. Still had the same issue. Phone company has been to her house, they have hooked up a laptop (thats what they say anyways as she wasnt home to confirm this) and connected to thier internet just fine. So far the only work around i have had for this problem was for her to pick up her phone and wait for the modem to grab the dialtone then hang up the phone.

Im curious if anyone else has had an issue like this or might know of a way for me to correct this problem? Any help would be appriciated.

It was getting kind of late for me dig into the specs of this pc but here is what i remember seeing.

WinXP Pro
256Mb ram
AMD 1ghz

[TripleRLtd]

I would still question the phone line.
Someone needs to be home the next time they come.
Sometimes you can't tell them it is for a modem/internet, since they will then make all kinds of excuses.
Where and who is the phone company?
Also, just out of interest, have you tried a real hardware modem?

[crazyspider]

I can try a hardware modem next weekend, i have a hard time getting out to peoples houses because i work a 10pm-6am shift (personally i like the shift, no one bugs me.) The phone company is Verizon (not the best, but we have worse here) and the location is a very small town in michigan (small enough ive only had 56k internet here for 4 years now). to cure my curiosity now, what brings you to still question a phone line problem?

[TripleRLtd]

[QUOTE=crazyspider. to cure my curiosity now, what brings you to still question a phone line problem?[/QUOTE] Because of what you said:

At her house, when she attempts to dialup, she gets a no dialtone error 680. This seems to happen with any modem we place in the machine. Here at the shop the modem will connect just fine. I have tried some of the obvious fixes that i could think of at the time. (removed line splitters, phones, faxes, etc).Finally I connected a line directly to the outside box to rule out a wireing issue. Still had the same issue.

And I didn't mean just inside wiring. From the outside telco connection to the house: is it underground or suspended?

[arch0nmyc0n]

I deal with "rural" area dial-ups quite frequently (as TripleREltd knows my farmer buddies :P ) Usually the problem is the modem will dial but will not connect, or it's slow and a hardware modem usually at LEAST connects or speeds up the connection (USR are good, but by far the best I've seen ever is the AOpen ITU/2 ISA modem, it sucks it's ISA tho) ANYWHO

I have seen the modem not picking up the dial tone. A local Bell moron explained it to me something like this: "When you pick up yer phone there is an increase in voltage across the line which activates the dial tone. Perhaps the modem you're using isn't creating the correct voltage difference." This is caused by either really horrible modems, or just poor line conditions. Even if you tested from the de-mark point it could be the wiring outside or she could be miles from the nearest telco station.

Hope this at least sheds a light on something...

[arch0nmyc0n]

OH... and another interesting thing I've seen work.... just try a different ISP like if you have dialup account with someone or a friend does... try it out... try a Verizon dial-up account? (I'm Canadian so I don't really know much about them) That has solved 3 customer's problems before...

Nevermind, just went out for a smoke and relized this won't help :P

[Gollo]

Try disabling the "wait for dial tone" or whatever the thing is.

[tratclif0]

You might ask your customer how long it takes for them to get a dial tone just by picking up the phone -- it sounds like the issue is a "slow dial tone" which the phone company may or may not be able to do something about. By default, any modem will wait 2 seconds for a dial tone.

Just unchecking "wait for dial tone" wouldn't work in this case, since the modem would just start dialing blindly after 2 seconds.

There are a couple of ways to add a pause. A comma in the phone number will make the modem pause 2 seconds, and you can at the initialization string s6=# where # can be between 2 and 255 and represent the number of seconds before dialing the modem will wait.

If you want to try this, get into Control Panel | Phone and Modem Options | Modems tab, and get into the properties of the selected modem. On the General tab, uncheck Wait for dial tone. If you want to do the initialization string, click on the Advanced tab and put in s6=whatever

I had one (thoroughly nasty) customer back when I worked dial-up support that this worked for.