My internet connection occasionally will not disconnect by the usual means. And I am forced to physically unplug the telephone cable to free up the line.

I use a standard dialup service provided by Earthlink. When I want to disconnect, I right-click on the icon and then select "disconnect" from the menu - pretty tricky, huh?

On rare occasions, when I do that, nothing happens. Further, when I right-click the icon again, the menu does not appear.

I have tried calling up Task Manager and killing the IPClient and (Earthlink) TaskPanel processes. However, that does not kill the connection either. That's when I pull the plug - literally.

Any ideas?

p.s. I have not contacted and will not contact Earthlink. The tech help there, once very good, has becoem as worthless as any I have ever encountered.

I don't have any ideas, but the people in the "Networking" section maybe more knowledgeable.

I use earthlink DSL and the tech help has always been pretty good. I would suggest calling them. It is probably something to do with their software if you have it loaded.

If you are using their software, why not uninstall it and then re-install it again. Be sure you have the cd or at least the dial-up numbers for them.

I avoid using any ISP software simply for that reason.

Why not just make up an earthlink dialup connection and use that?

Some HELP in posting on Cnet plus free progs and instructions Glad to Help!

yea probably is the software but, most dailup providers make you use there software. I use to have this problem alot with netzero. I switched
to copper.net, so that I could use dailup on linux operating systems, that is when I still had dailup.

larry

Software dialup based isp like to hide their real connection properties. They give a dummy phone number,user name and of course you also need a password. There is a program that will interpret what the real phone number,user name and password the connection is using. This information can then be used to create the windows dialler for it. ISP software then no
longer needs to be used.

Now the bad news is that I can't name this free little program, as it would be considered a hack, which is against forum rules.

Might help in creating dialup connection for earthlink. http://kb.earthlink.net/case.asp?ar...

I appreciate the replies. But I would rather identify and solve the problem rather than figure out another way to work around it.

Also, I tried posting in the "Networking" section, but my attempt was rejected as a duplicate post.

lol

So I guess I am stuck in the WinXP section.

Huh?