Dial up annoyance

joto

My Dad has a dell computer running windows ME (no slagging please).

Anyway everytime the computer boots up the Dial up connection box pops up. Also everytime he goes to open Explorer, or right clicks on anything, it pops up too.

I ran Spybot & Adaware (both latest updates), and full virus scan. All show nothing. There are no dialers installed or unknown programs.

Anybody any ideas please?

theciscokid

in internet explorer

tools > internet options > connections

highlight the default connection and select "never dial a connection"

also check your startup folder under start > all programs

joto

highlight the default connection and select "never dial a connection"

Doesn't that mean when he starts IE that it won't dial up?

I checked startup folder, thanks.

theciscokid

well u can go to

start > settings > dial up networking > connection (whatever its called)

right click it (send to desktop) or just simply drag the icon to desktop

so all he has to do is double click it from the desktop

so when its done just open IE

joto

ok thanks.

Seems to me though there's something going on.:dunno:

secret_squirrel

Could it be active desktop playing up???

Dun

Do you have ZoneAlarm installed? It was a beast of a thing for doing that - at least two or three DUN connection windows everytime I started windows.

joto

No don't have ZoneAlarm. Could Norton AV be doing it?
I didn't think about active desktop....must look at that.

Am not at his computer today so will look at it during the week. It's a nuisance though.:mad:

Thanks for input.

Capt'n Midnight

persistant links - if you mapped a link to a drive on dialup
adobe acrobat looking for updates
antivirus looking for updates
porn dialers

joto

er- definitely not the last one.
Could be antivirus though because it updates regularly.

if you mapped a link to a drive on dialup

what does it mean and if it's bad can I fix it?:)
Thanks.

secret_squirrel

Just to clarify what captn said about porn dialers, quite often they are diguises as internet explorer plugin or other harmless looking downloads. You dont need to specifically download a program called XXXdialer.exe (for example) to end up with one on your pc. Infact some of them can be really sneaky indeed and do things like silence your modem speaker before dialing a premium rate number in belize!

thesteve

run msconfig (START->RUN->type msconfig), go to the startup tab and take a look at the entries here. you really don't need much in here (apart from your antivirus software and some other necessary entries)..... if there's some other software references here you can uncheck the box next to them. When you're finished unchecking, reboot the machine and see if it still happens