Is there a minimum dialup speed that Vista can cope with?

Is there anyone here who has access to Microsoft's technical help, and would
be willing to ask them for me? (I can't ask them a question directly, my
Vista being preinstalled).

Searching Microsoft's Knowledge Base was a slow business for me, but I think
I've tried all the relevant keywords and that the answer's not there.

Another thing that's waiting for the answer, is that I'm about to make a
formal complaint to the phone line provider, about the line quality. The
answer might add weight to the complaint, and persuade the phone company to
do something about it, or do something more quickly (another thing that might
get me out of this hole).

I'm currently trying to find someone in my (rural) area who has a dialup
connection - if I can connect my laptop via their phone line (which would
probably be faster than mine), it'll go some way towards an answer, and add
weight to my complaint to the line company.

Meanwhile, does anyone here know the answer about Vista? Maybe Microsoft
people read this forum?

If Vista does have a minumum speed it'll connect at, my phone line company
(and others) might be in danger of losing people who buy new computers, and
be spurred to make more effort!

On Thu, 25 Sep 2008 13:03:01 -0700, Hilary
<Hilary@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

>I'm currently trying to find someone in my (rural) area who has a dialup
>connection - if I can connect my laptop via their phone line (which would
>probably be faster than mine), it'll go some way towards an answer, and add
>weight to my complaint to the line company.

I don't know where you live, but in my area (U.S.A.) the phone company
will not be a problem to deal with. They will check your line for you
without you having to provide proof that it's not giving you a good
connection.

>
>Meanwhile, does anyone here know the answer about Vista? Maybe Microsoft
>people read this forum?

There is no minimum connect speed for Vista. It works like any other
system: it depends on your modem to make the connection and once it's
made, it will use whatever it provides.

16K or less is horrible. Whenever I had line problems (very rare) I
could pickup the phone and hear background static. When I stopped
using dialup over 7 years ago I was regularly getting 50k connections.

Odd how no one has responded

Fortunately (for you) I am still using dial-up at home, for my ow
reasons

First of all, the line quality (you are right about that) is the reaso
why you have these horrible connection speeds. Any static on the lin
would be a huge factor in degrading the connection quality and even t
connect at all

Second of all, the biggest reason why you can hear a dial-tone and th
computer cannot, is a *defective* modem! The two best brands are *3Co
USRobotics and ZOOM*. Staples sells the ZOOM USB modem for around $55

*I strongly suggest you buy either a 3Com USRobotics or ZOOM modem in
retail store and try it out.* If it does or doesn't work you can retur
the product much quicker than online. By the way, Staples and Wal-mar
do not charge restock fees: BestBuy will

Now some things to do..

1. Did you do a line test -over the phone- with your phone company
(the free test). Do it more than once within a week, waiting a day i
between each attempt. Utility companies would REFUSE to thank you fo
informing them of a defect in the system. So if it didn't work one day
you report it, and it worked 2 days later...don't expect a "thank you.

2. Did you check where the line enters your house, and (if you kno
what you are doing), ensured that the connections to the terminals ar
*TIGHT* as well as having *MANY* threads of copper connecting to thei
terminal? If you cannot see any terminals, but instead a single (o
multiple) jacks, try plugging the computer into that jack directly an
trying again (this was a Verizon suggestion)

I would also want to let you know that your ISP provider can also b
the culprit. They can be giving you a *very* busy server, and at whic
point you will get those very low connection speeds. Who is your IS
provider

1. Change or try a different provider. 'NetZero
(http://www.netzero.com) and 'Juno' (http://www.juno.com) (paren
company is NetZero) provide a 30-day trial of their software. Juno als
offers a email-only FREE version which is only good for 15-hours a mont
- but in this situation it would be perfect to see if the server is th
issue

2. Bring your laptop to a friend's home, first "next-door" and then i
a different city / county, and try it again. Although I do strongl
advise you get a local number to use so that they don't get an
long-distance charges appearing on their phone bill

I do want to inform you that all utility companies would rather blam
the customer than test any equipment out (or ask their supervisor fo
help). This goes for phone and cable alike. And if you talked to you
ISP, they would blame the utility company first. Ensure that before yo
call any of them up, you have done as much background research an
experimentation as you can. This way after you inform them of thei
ill-advised uneducated guess, they can really start to troubleshoot th
issue

I hope I had some helpful information for you. Good luck

Also, I hope you decided to join the forums soon ;

--
Poseidonas

On Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:22:26 -0500, Poseidonas
<guest@unknown-email.com> wrote:

>Odd how no one has responded.

I did. Five hours before YOU did.

On Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:22:26 -0500, Poseidonas
<guest@unknown-email.com> wrote:

>Odd how no one has responded.

Never mind... you're using that web-interface quasi forum. It sucks
most of it's posts off of Microsoft servers, and this is proof that it
doesn't do such a good job of that.

Imagine how many people who use that don't get their posts OUT to
where the majority of us are!

Do yourself a favor and shitcan that "forum" and do it the right way:

http://tinyurl.com/4octfl

In message <7b573d5ed87dfe67f1e9be0ee97a5cc4@nntp-gateway.com>
Poseidonas <guest@unknown-email.com> wrote:

>2. Did you check where the line enters your house, and (if you know
>what you are doing), ensured that the connections to the terminals are
>*TIGHT* as well as having *MANY* threads of copper connecting to their
>terminal?

But not too tight, too much pressure will cause the copper to break.

Wow! Three people replying at once - thank you so much for taking the
trouble.

Maybe not many experts have needed to answer the question before, and that's
why it took a while (or maybe it's just a dumb question!).

I'm in the Republic of Ireland, Paul, where the national phone line provider
(Eircom) doesn't exactly win plaudits for its alert and knowledgeable
helpline people. Their 'engineers on the ground' do the best they can given
the infrastructure. But the company? Well, the simplest way to get a
flavour of what we're up against here would be to take a look at the Ireland
Offline forum, at www.boards.ie, Hosted tab, Technology, IrelandOffline
(There are more details of my situation there, under screen name "Fogmatic",
which would be off-topic here).
About 1/3 of internet users in the R.O.I. can't get broadband, but you
wouldn't believe that if you listened to the government etc. Some bigwig
consultant published an article earlier this year about why dialup is still
"popular" with 1/3 of Irish net users. His suggested solution was to make
websites even more difficult to access with dialup, by loading them with more
images etc. As you may imagine, the responses in the forum were most
entertaining.

Getting my line tested is no problem though. I no longer ring Eircom
directly, as I 'sacked' them as an ISP years ago and moved to an
internet/phone bundle with another ISP, UTV (Eircom just rakes in the line
rental). The procedure is simply to ring UTV, who check my line immediately,
take one look and impress the situation on Eircom. (Unusually, I've found
UTV's technical helpline people very knowledgeable, suggesting obscure
settings that have solved many a problem in the past).
Eircom then send out the engineers to patch up the offending junction (for
now), and the company rings a few days later saying "Is your phone line all
right now?", not a very useful question (line tests being better at that than
ears). I'm keeping modem logs because the line quality fluctuates many times
a day, and periodic tests don't give a true picture.

Thank you for giving me the answer. Ruling out Vista as an obstacle (and
connection settings, as they're the same in all 3 computers), narrows it down
to something about the modem. Maybe it adds just enough of an extra layer of
hardware/software to fail with this slow connection.

Thank you, Posiedonas. Your "defective" modem suggestion prompted me to try
the external one with this 98SE computer I'm using, but I've misplaced the
installation disk! I'll try it as soon as it turns up. Alhough it worked
once with the Vista machines, even if it works with the old PC I'll still try
a different modem for the new computers (it might help the sophisticated,
modern hardware to cope with the increasingly unsophisticated old line!).

And thanks for the modem suggestions. Most retailers in Ireland and the
rest of the world are mutually exclusive, but I can get just about anything
like that by post, from Irish online IT retailers, or the UK Maplin
Electronics. If I can't get the same makes, I can look up their
specifications on the web and find one that matches them.

I haven't checked where the line reaches the house - the engineers do it
regularly! They've also checked the elderly wall socket, about 2 years ago.
They showed us the rampant verdigris inside, and fitted a new one, wired so
as not to channel the rain into the socket like before (phone and internet
connections had been promptly short-circuiting with the first bit of current).
Connecting the laptop directly to the (single) wall phone socket has never
made any improvement (and the often audible noise on the line sounds the same
as through extension cables, splitters etc).
The line's always worse in damp weather. We also have local specialities,
like horses in a local field finding a particular pole ideal when they
occasionally feel the need for a scratch; the movement puts too much strain
on the old junctions (that one took quite a while for the engineers to
diagnose!)

Thank you for taking the trouble to suggest the ISPs, but I'm sorry to say I
can't follow them up, as only Irish ones are available here. I'll find out
if there are similar ISP trial offers here though. I've had bad experiences
with ISP disks and try to avoid them; Eircom's, for instance, though it just
entered a few basic settings, managed to cause computer problems (UTV just
tells new customers their server's phone number etc).

I'm still trying to find somebody within reach with a dialup connection to
try the laptop with, apart from my immediate neighbours whose lines are as
bad as mine. When broadband became available in the nearest towns, people
adopted it like a shot.

Yes, DevilsPGD, I've discovered too that pressure can break copper. But can
anyone help me explain that to the horses?

Thank you all for the advice (I knew this would be a good forum!)