modem gets no dial tone

Hi all

A friend of mine has an Acer Travelmate 630 notebook running XP Pro. Said the dial up dropped after a while and the machine in all was very slow. took a look at it and found it had Sasser and Blaster. Removed these using the symantec tools, did windows updates and updated the antivirus which hadn't been done in a while and did a full system scan - nothing turned up. Now I can't connect to the internet. Uninstalled and reinstalled the modem but it says there is no dial tone. you can hear a hum but that is it. ran winsock repair tool. What else can I do to get this back up and running?
thanks for any ideas
Brent

Here's what I'd try first. Plug a regular phone into the wall jack and see if you hear a dial tone. If you do, plug the modem back in, plug the phone into the modem's extra phone jack (if it has one) and see if you hear a dial tone.

If don't hear a dial tone at all, the problem is with the phone wiring. If you do hear a dial tone when connected to the modem, let us know and we'll take it from there ...

thanks vernon,
the phone cable and line are fine as I tried connecting with a different machine and all was well. When I try to connect I hear a quiet tone but no dialing. It was connecting intermittently when infected but once i clened up the Blaster and Sasser worms and did the updates it wouldn't work.
I notice on the add remove programs list a number of Windows updates with SP2 beside them. Does this happen when installing SP1?

the latest...
I did a clean reinstall but still all that happens when trying to connect is a dial tone and time out. very strange. figure it must be something to do with the modem itself.
thanks
brent

well i got it working. what did i do?
removed the hard drive and blew on the NIC and modem ports. plugged it in and it dialed. now why would a bit of dust stop the dialing process
i am perplexed

Quote:

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Originally posted by coops
well i got it working. what did i do?
removed the hard drive and blew on the NIC and modem ports. plugged it in and it dialed. now why would a bit of dust stop the dialing process
i am perplexed

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Gunk on one of the leads in the phone connector could certainly cause this...