A friend asked me to diagnose his Vista Home Premium laptop because he cannot get onto the Internet thru his dial-up service. I took the laptop home, tried connecting it up to my phone line, and got the message that it could not connect to the Internet - no dial tone detected. I know that our phones are working (we do have VoIP). Also, I verified in Device Manager that the intenal modem is working properly. Is it possible that there is a problem with the RJ11 jack itself? I did notice that they had it set up to work thru COM3; I tried changing it to COM1 (both virtual ports), but that didn't help. I also noticed in Device Mgr that there is no listing for Ports, even though it is there on my daughter's Vista PC. Any ideas? 1 Corinthians 15:3-4

Do you have a analog line? VoIP doesn't go over an analog phone line but a digital one like DSL or broadband. You need to connect the rj11 to an analog line. Doesn't matter if com1 or 3 as long as you don't use both. Under control panel, other options is a modem test program in Vista [least my ultimate version has it]. Might start there. Also make sure in the bios the modem is enabled.

Thanks for your reply, wanderer. I did run the modem diagnostics test in Control Panel - Phone & Modem, and the laptop's internal modem passed the test. I hadn't thought about digital vs analog phone line. If all we have is VoIP service (which we get thru our cable company), then I may not be able to test my friend's dial-up connection, even though I have the ISP phone #, etc. (if I understand what you're saying). I don't think my friend has anything other than a normal analog phone line at his place, so I wonder if the problem could still be the RJ11 jack on his laptop. 1 Corinthians 15:3-4

does a analog phone work on his phone line?

Well, I think so. I know that the laptop used to be able to connect via the phone line, because dial-up is all he has. My two questions would be this: (1) since our phone service here at my house is VoIP, then does that mean it would be pointless to try to test his laptop's dial-up account here, and (2) if his laptop worked at his house before, what would cause it to quit working? If their phone service was switched from analog to digital, would that do it? 1 Corinthians 15:3-4