No Modem Detected? Hello Everyone: My younger brother lives in another state than me and he was given a BlueLight.com Computer windows98SE and the person who gave it to him used the Recovery Disk that came with it to format and erase and reinstall the OS. Now he is trying to get on to the internet and when he tries to join NetZero, he gets half way thru and when it comes to setting up phone numbers, it states that his Modem is not being detected. His phone line is working ok. Now I dont know but he has a Second Disk that came with the pc and its for loading the Drivers. Could that be whats wrong with it not detecting the modem, is because he has to insert and run the Driver Disk before it will catch the modem? Please let me know what your thoughts are on this. I dont know too much about 98SE, I have an xp. Thanks

Are the modem drivers installed? Is he able to load any webpages at all?

Yes, the drivers for the modem have to be installed before it will work.

It may be that the problem is that there are two modems drivers installed and the one you need for NetZero is the one that is not being used in Dial-Up Networking. Navigate to C:\WINDOWS\INF\OTHER and cut all modem inf files from there to a temporary storage folder and then remove all modems in the Device Mangler (Windows Key + Pause). Then run the modem applet in the Control Panel or reboot to allow Windows to detect the correct modem you have which will then allow you to install the correct drivers for it. 98 will try to default install drivers from C:\WINDOWS\INF\OTHER folder if a modem there is even half way close to the one installed in the slots and that driver may or may not work it correctly. Removing the inf file for the driver here forces Windows to take a more discerning look at the modem in the slots. THEN you can select the correct modem from Dial-Up Networking right click properties. 98 needs to find the modem first unless the particular modem has 'special' installation instructions to the contrary. The modem applet in the Control Panel will see modems that the Add New Hardware Wizard (reboot method) can not, but sometimes a modem that CAN be seen by Add New Hardware method needs to be installed by the reboot method and not the modem applet. No clear cut road to take, sorry. 1st, double check the number of installed modems in modem applet of Control Panel. 2nd, post the modem make and numbers if you can. Hopefully someone with experiance with the modem in question can chime in with how to proceed.

Right click on my computer, hit properties, and go to the "Device Manager" tab. Make sure the name of the modem appears in the "Modems" section and not the "Other Devices" section. If there is no "Modems" section, then the driver has definitely not been installed.