> This guy was blasting in at 45,333 for over a month, then *BANG*=20
> can't connect at all. I tried *all* of the usual tricks. He even=20
> signed up with another local PM3-based ISP. No luck there, either.=20
> This moring, I get this:
>=20
> Do you see what I mean? AOHell's software *WORKS!* Thanks to all of=20
> you who suggested sources for installation CD's but every single one=20
> of those companies' kits installs DUN... UNACEPTABLE!
Ok, I think we can all agree that Win95 is not very good, and the built
in DUN isn't that hot either when it comes to reliability. Still, if you
compare the functionality of DUN upgraded to 1.3 to that of Trumpet
Winsock for instance it is way, way ahead when it comes to integration and
simple CPU usage and stability (as in being prone to crash while running).
It's completely logical that AOL would work. I have no direct experience
with AOL's software, but I'm sure they use a proprietary dialer that
accesses the modem directly, bypassing DUN. That's why it works when=20
DUN in general doesn't. I'm sure your customer could fax too with his
modem when DUN didn't work.
I get a call or two each month from Win95 customers who develop sudden and
unexplained connection problems. Modem connects fine, then PPP negotiation
fails for seemingly no reason.
In those cases one of two things nearly always works - either have the
customer install the DUN 1.3 upgrade, which we include on our discs, or a
manual removal and reinstall of DUN from Control Panel \ Add/Remove
programs \ Windows setup. Neither is painful to do, doesn't take long, and
afterwards the customers connection will usually work just fine.
In this case, the problem isn't with DUN, even though unexplained and
sudden failures like that are bad. The problem is that you didn't know
what to do to get the customer back on track. I would have left for AOL
too had I been the customer and clueless how to solve it myself.=20
Ranting to the list about how bad Win95 is won't help much either - we
know this, and have learned to work around it.=20
My personal theory is that one of the myriad system files that make up
windows networking have gotten damaged, since a reinstall of dun loads
them fresh from the Win95 cd and after that it works.
Just make sure the customers have a way to get to Dun 1.3 easily and
next time it happens to one of them, have them run the install. A chimp
can do it, if they know how to work the cd-rom and put the Win95 cd in
there, there are no options except "Do you want to install, yes/no?"
Regards,
=09Kimmo.
-----------------------------------+-------------------------------------+ Kimmo Jaskari | =C5LCOM - =C5lands Datakommunikation Ab = | E-mail: kimmo@alcom.aland.fi | http://www.alcom.aland.fi | http://www.alcom.aland.fi/kimmo | Phone: +358-(0)18-12122 | ---------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
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