My PC Ordeal

[All Seeing Eye]

Last night my Father in Law asked me to wipe his computer and reload windows to start afresh. So I made sure I had all the disks and began, I deleted his partition and then created a new partition and began to format it (the long formatting because I wanted it doing well), anyway it gets to about 52% and then suddenly the entire thing just crashes. After this crash everytime I tried to start the computer back up there was NOTHING on screen at all, no motherboard start up screen no nothing and the computer kept bleeping at me, it wouldn't read any discs or nothing, I tried turning all power off and replugging cables and NOTHING. So anyway I decide to pull the side panel off and to start pulling internal cables and boards out and re-placing them (the same ones), it was quite dusty so I gave it a quick spring clean whilst I was in there.
Anyway I put the power back on and started the bad boy up and IT WORKED! the motherboard start up screen came on and I once again started formatting the partition but this time I chose the QUICK format option, I thought i'm not risking this again. It formatted very fast and I loaded windows back on and I proceeded to install all the drivers no problem.
Do you think the problems are over? nope!. I then proceeded to try and put AOL back on the computer! the damn thing wouldn't detect the modem, after a few minutes umming and arring I realised i'd not loaded the DSL Modem driver onto the computer , so I loaded that on and it then detected the modem. Are my problems over? Nope! I do everything right but when it comes to connecting to the internet it just would not connect AT ALL!! the stupid connection screen would come on (the three boxes where those Earths or whatever spin in them to show it's connecting) and when it got to the middle box it would stop and say that the connection failed.

I HATE AOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've told me pappy in law to call AOL and get their advice because i'm completely stumped as to why it's not connecting, i've done everything correctly, the drivers are installed, the modem is detected, the modem is powered up and plugged in where it should, it even begins to connect but just fails half way through.

I HATE AOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Damn AOL has showed me up!

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Stories like this remind me why I invested in backup software that can restore the entire system image. It has saved my ass on many occasions.

Sorry I don't have any advice to offer on the AOL problem, other than it sounds possibly like some of the configuration settings may be wrong.

 

[judge alba]

are you using the modem aol gave you or one you've bought seperatly?
i had no end of problems with the modem aol sent me. so in the end i bought a cheap one from zoom works ok.
have you tried the 'one click fixes menu on the aol icon in the bottom right hand corner?

 

[Luckyflux]

Tough one. Did you reset the DSL modem? Unplug it and plug it back in? You probably already did that.

You could try to reinstall TCP/IP. It is the likely problem, but I have seen it work once. Did you get any kind of IP address from the modem after you tried everything? You could refresh/renew your IP addy, but a reboot would do that as well.

Tough problem, I'd have to troubleshoot more to see what's up. Good luck friend.

 

[Guartho]

Did you re-enter the login information if you have it? I know AT&T has account log-in information that I wasn't even aware of until lightning toasted my DSL modem.

It had come pre-configured, or the install CD pre-configured it for me. I brought the DSL modem home from work since they're both AT&T accounts, but that screwed up my work DSL modem. Had to call AT&T and that's how I learned that they do have account login info. Up until then I guess I'd just assumed that they just turned DSL on or off for your phone number when you subscribe or cancel.

Anyway, on my DSL modems there's an IP address printed on the bottom that I used to access the interface and manually re-enter my account info and get it working again.