I have a dell xps m140 with a 2 ghz centrino and 1gb of RAM. the pc uses AOL for internet access (not my pc) and was working fine and now it is not listed in the connections in AOL. I checked device manager and everything appears to be ok but when i check the properties of the modem it says that the device is in use by .... I've also created a new internet connection to try and get it to dial out to anything but it gives me this error when i do that i get the message "Error 633: The modem(or other connecting device) is already in use or is not configured properly. Please help me get this modem figured out...

if you have a spare modem laying around, pop that in and see what happens. Sounds to me like the modem is corrupted in some way.

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It's a laptop, so popping in a new modem may not be that easy.

Uninstall the modem in the Device Manger. Reboot your computer. When the new hardware found wizard appears, ignore it.

Then have your Dell driver disk available and go to Device Manager, click on the Modem which should have a yellow exclamation point next to it and go to the Drivers tab and reinstall the drivers form the CD.

When you're done, go into your browser and make sure that you don't have it set up a to dial-up a connection anytime it's off line. Also check you anti virus program to make sure it's not trying to dial out on it's own. These can often tie up a modem on a dial up connection.

I'm going to try that but i'm pretty sure i've done that before - i'll let you know in a bit what happens

"The modem(or other connecting device) is already in use or is not configured properly"

You can also get that message if something else that uses the dail-up modem, such as a fax program, is using it. Stop any such program from running - e.g. most fax programs have a feature where they can have a resident program module wait for incoming faxes - that must not be running when you attempt to connect to the internet.

Also, sometimes the AOL configuration gets corrupted and you just have to uninstall AOL in Add/Remove Programs and then install it again.

OK so i did what you recommended and after i uninstalled the modem when i rebooted it automatically detected the modem and installed the software. So i'm getting the same error.

On a side note... Is there anyway to check what coms are in use and by what? I've even set up a connection to dial up a university VPN and it won't dial because the connection is in use...

"...when i check the properties of the modem it says that the device is in use by .... "

What does it say there?
That may be very important.

"....when i rebooted it automatically detected the modem and installed the software. "

If there's something wrong with the software, or settings in the software, or if something in the software is corrupted, that may not be a good thing.
You might need to Un-install the drivers for the modem in Add/Remove Programs, then follow seawatch's directions in response 2, but of course you must have the drivers for the modem handy - if you don't, get them from the Dell web site for your model on another computer first, and copy them to something.

"... Is there anyway to check what coms are in use and by what?"

If you mean Com ports (serial ports), not that I know of - that can be difficult to determine because they use really old legacy rules.
In Device Manager you can tell whether a Com port is enabled and what resources it is using, and you can look at the dial-up modem's properties to see which Com port it is set to, but you can't directly tell what is using it at any particular time there.
The Com port the modem is using, and it's resources - IRQ and I/O port address - must not be being used by something else - usually nothing else is using the I/O address in any case, but it's possible something else is using or sharing the IRQ the modem wants to use.
If you have a physical Com port, you often must disable that in the bios Setup in order for an internal dial-up modem to be able to use that Com port's resources in Windows.
A Com port showing up in Windows doesn't necessarily indicate it is enabled in the bios Setup.

Also, it's possible the modem is damaged and that's why it won't connect, and the error message is a default one that really doesn't indicate the problem. Is the laptop connected to something that protects it and it's phone line from voltage surges and spikes? Is there any possibility it was exposed to a voltage surge or spike since it last worked properly, such as from a power outage? Any lightning in your area since it last worked properly?

I'm not sure if it has ever been subject to a spike/surge and since I don't know the end user that well I'd have to venture out onto a limb and say yes, I'm pretty sure that user does not protect her laptop on every occasion.

I have returned the laptop with the problem UNFIXED. As this is every IT person's nightmare my suggestion was to reinstall windows and download the drivers from Dell. Since they weren't planning on paying me (even if i had fixed it).

I should hear back soon and i'll post whether the modem was actually broken or not....