Hi All

I am a new visitor to this group and not well versed with computer
hardware so forgive me if this question has already been answered
somewhere in the past.

I have a dell inspiron 8100 laptop with internal 56K modem.
For past 2 months I have been getting strange problem with my dialup
service.

The dialup program doesn't work when the laptop is powered on ac
power. Just plugging in the laptop power cord messes dialtone
completely. Using a battery as power supply works fine.

While experimenting, I realized that the problem is caused by using a
3 pin plug for power cord. If I use a 2pin plug (leaving out earthing
wire, ... quite risky..), situation improves somewhat.

I have tried replacing modem and ac power adaptor but the problem
persists.
The laptop is under warranty which is running out and Dell tech.
supoort sucks as usual. As a last resort they have advised me to
reformat hard disk and reinstall operating system but am a bit
skeptical about this solution.

Could it be something with wiring in my house? Has anyone seen this
kind of problem before?

Any help or pointers will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

On 30 Jan 2004 06:26:48 -0800, vidyak@hotmail.com (Vidya) put finger
to keyboard and composed:

Can you use a multimeter to measure the voltage differences between
earth/neutral and earth/active at your power point?

Some time ago there was a post which described a problem that appears
at face value to be the reverse of yours. In that particular case,
removing the earth pin from a desktop PC prevented the modem from
negotiating a 56K connection but limited it to V34 rates. I'm betting
that the modem in your laptop uses a silicon DAA for interfacing to
the phone line.


- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 's' from my address when replying by email.