computer freezes when on the internet

Hello everyone,

I was not able to find a group the name of which would appear
most appropriate to my problem, but perhaps someone here will be
kind enough to help or at least explain what is happening.

I have been on the net for about 8 years with Win95B (with some
minor net-related upgrades) and a 33.6 modem and BION everything
works JUST fine. The system minus internet works fine as well, I
see the BSOD MAYBE twice a year, etc. So the system is NOT the
problem. At least I REALLY don't think so. I spent MANY hours
tweaking it and eliminating stupid Windows problems and since
than it has been totally problem-free. Really.

I am however experiencing an intermittent problem which I
suspect has something to do with some people's relatively new
hobby of crashing networks and providers with DOS attacks and
malformed packets etc (I am not that good with this terminology,
I know how to make my computer live happily but I don't know
much about networking and the net, so excuse my ignorance).

I am running an excellent firewall, Black Ice, an old version
(the new versions won't run on 95B) and have been for about 5
years I think. It has stopped EVERY attempt at intrusion and
only ONCE in 5 years I received a red alert, and even that WAS
stopped. I have tried other firewalls an they do not appear to
offer ANY advantages, and FWIW, ZoneAlarm crashed my computer
every time and, it being free, I got no help from them at all,
and stuck to Black Ice. I regularly check my machine and always
scan everything for viruses etc etc. So I do not believe any of
those things can even indirectly be causing the problem.

Anyway (sorry this is taking a while to explain), the problem
happens VERY intermittently. Long-term-speaking, i.e. it won't
happen for weeks or months and then happens several times a
week, and this time it has been happening every 20 minutes to
every 2 hours for well over a week. It usually doesn't last this
long nor is so persistent, but this time it is, so I am writing
if nothing else to find out what the heck it is.

What happens is, when I am on the internet, and everything is
working just fine, my computer will simply freeze and I have to
reboot. I am used to leaving it running all night dl'g stuff and
now when I check it in the morning I often find it froze an hour
after I went to sleep. Etc. VERY annoying. The file I was dl'g
is size 0, although I have recovered some of them just with
scandisk and they (not all but most) seem to end with about 30
lines of jumble which sometimes corresponds to my Usenet group
list, sometimes appears to be a list of servers from some remote
part of the world in alphabetical order, and sometimes something
totaly unrecognizable. I will hapily provide a couple of samples
if it will help someone to help me with this.

Since DOS attacks and malformed packets and other ways of
crashing big systems have been somewhat in vogue recently, I
suspect it is something of this nature that is causing the
problem. Something that Black Ice will not let "enter" my system
nonetheless manages to freeze it. It has never caused any actual
damage except the waste of hours of time when the computer which
is supposed to be dl'g sits there eating up electricity and
doing nothing until I look at it again, which as I said, is
often not until the next day or several hours later when I
return home or whatever.

Am I at all on the right track and is there any way to stop this
from occurring? My ISP provider has millions of customers and
occasionally the line I am connected to simply stops working. I
suspect it's the same thing on their system. I just redial and
get another line, and everything is fine. Except, as I said, for
about a week or two now, it will freeze after 2 or 3 hours, and
sometimes after 15 minutes. A few days ago it made it through
about 10 hours and I thought the sys ops around the world
finally killed the problem, but it was back the same evening.

I am signed up and pre-paid with this ISP for another 11 months
(have been using them for about 5 years now) and while they are
a despicable monopoly, and when I first tried them 8 years ago
the service was totally unacceptable, it is now fine. I don't
know, but I don't THINK it has to do with the ISP. And there is
really no other decent ISP available in the 3rd world country
where I live.

While I often see replies to other people's problems which
mainly consist of some equivalent of "your system is trash, get
a 3GB machine with Linux (or XP) and your problems will be over
" I don't accept that attitude unless conclusively proven with
some facts. As I said, this only happens a few times a year, has
never been THIS persistent, and the system when not connected to
the internet works perfectly, however difficult it may be to
believe for fans of the latest technologies.

I would appreciate any comments or suggestions.
Thank you.
m.

 

m.

Sifting through your somewhat longish ramble I perceive you problem is
most likely on 'your' PC.
Malformed packets, DOS attacks may well stop Internet data flow, crash
websites etc, but they will not 'freeze' your PC.

A PC that freezes has two possible causes:
1 Hardware, 2 Software.

Hardware causes in general revolve around Heat (seized or blocked fans),
dodgy connections on cables, cards and IC's. Power supplys reaching the end
of their natural life can also cause unpredictable 'flakeyness'. Other
possibilities include power surges damaging modems and power supplies,
motherboard capacitors self destructing, screws coming loose........
You indicate your PC is 'not new'. As such you will have to accept the
possibility that there is a point where even the most expensive and up till
now most reliable of hardware does reach a 'time to upgrade' point.

Software causes are best attacked by methodically disabling or uninstalling
software till the problem goes away, then reinstalling as suits.
It is also not without probablility that older Anti Virus/Spyware products
and firewalls are unable to detect and remove newer 'bugs' despite what you
'hopefully' think.

Not advising you to go spend lots of cash, but to face the fact things do
'age'

Interested to hear your progress.

Cheers
Paul.

 

m. and addendum:

Sign I saw a couple of years ago on a PC service departments counter.

"Please note repairs to Computers over 2 years old only carry a warranty on
new parts "

The explanation they gave was their experience was that PC's older than that
invariably had several more problems hidden in the background,
paticularly once they had cracked the box and started moving things inside.

This ties in with my experience though I would have said nearer the 4/5 year
mark rather than 2 years.

Paul.

 

Like PC, I would suspect a hardware fault - starting with dust and then
looking at fans that don't blow any more, or not always.

If your modem is in internal one, it may be overheating simply from the
work-load - and if it's a 'software modem' it will be putting a load on
the entire system. So a replacement may be due even if the rest of your
system is still in good order. External modems are less prone to
overheating, and are easier to re-boot without having to re-boot
everything else, and if you get a 'real' hardware modem, that will put
almost no strain on the main computer.

A telephone line fault can cause the internet connection to be lost
without the modem being triggered to 'disconnect' [1]. Most software would
eventually time out anyway, but some programs don't always behave quite so
sensibly and could just sit there waiting for human intervention -
particularly if the modem hasn't told them that the connection has
stalled.

I don't know how realistic it is to keep an obsolete and
no-longer-supported operating system properly patched against all the new
threats and exploits that keep being invented or found. 'Anti-virus' and
'spyware detectors' and 'firewalls' can only go so far, and your old
'firewall' program can only intercept or warn you about things that its
creator programmed into it.

If you are in the habit of downloading 'stuff' then you are engaging in a
high-risk activity.

In my country, dial-up ISPs often include a condition in their terms of
service, to the effect that no equipment shall be left unattended while
connected to the internet - and some will break any connection that looks
'suspicious' or which exceeds a certain time limit, or for an account that
has reached a certain level of 'traffic' within a day or week or month.
And sometimes their own modems are 'flaky'.

Telephone companies sometimes dislike having their lines tied up
indefinitely by one user, and 'voice' calls will take precedence. They
all have a great many more customers using their lines for internet access
now, than they did 8 years ago - but they don't necessarily have any more
available 'bandwidth', so traffic jams are becoming more common.

[1] A software modem that 'hangs' or 'crashes' when the telephone line
misbehaves, may well do strange things to the other software running on a
Windows system.

 

Dear PC and Whiskers:

I very much appreciate your replies and suggestions. And I
apologize for not being more concise. I just can't seem to be
able to compress my thoughts into words effectively. (The
following being another example - my sincere apologies.)

You were very polite not to say what most people would have
said - and on occasion, I myself have said to people with
constant problems with older PC's. (I know an idiot who
insists on running XP on a 266. The only reason he can barely
do so AT ALL is that he somehow happens to have 256MB of RAM.
Still, he can not even defragment his (unpartitioned,
needless to say) 40GB drive. And he has CONSTANT problems. I
looked inside his computer and after I blew out about a pound
of dust, one of the flat HD cables literally fell apart in my
hand. I didn't even know that could happen! Anyway, another
story.)

I usually try to follow a logical thread when faced with a
problem. You start with the biggest circle and close in.

1) WHEN it happens.

Without the internet connection, the system works perfectly
whether it has been off for 3 days or on for 2 weeks
straight. It does't hang, freeze, make noises, etc. The two
times I can remember seeing the BSOD was when I did something
stupid like running several very mem-intensive programs at
the same time, so it was my fault, not the machine's. And
even more memory couldn't help since 95 can't use more than
64MB. I admit there are things I can NOT do with my computer
(like play games at 100fps in 3-D - which does not interest
me - or convert a music file to another format (takes like 3
hours per song on the 166 but I have another computer with a
2GB P4 which does that stuff in seconds or minutes).

As I said, WHEN ON the internet, is when the "freeze"
happens. When I use the term "freeze" I mean I can't do
ANYTHING. ALT-TAB does nothing, mouse won't respond,
ALT+CTL+DEL does nothing, it just sits there without a sound.

I respect your opinion and I admit I know almost nothing
about this, but so far it is just one opinion. And people ARE
getting more and more clever about screwing up the internet.

Since it ONLY EVER happens when I am online, logic would
dictate THAT is causing the problem, wouldn't it? It COULD be
the modem, but it a very good pre-3com internal USR 33.6
which has worked flawlessly once I got it set up right about
6 years ago. I know software modems are crap and that's why I
bought the USR. It cost me over a hundred dollars 8 years
ago. And like I said, the peculiar intermittence of the
problem does not fit in even with the "common and often
unsolvable largely because of the intermittence" computer
problems we all have experienced or at least heard of.

If I lived in a normal country, I could get an external
Motorola for like 20 bucks - even though I don't think it
would solve the problem (I could of course be wrong) but here
I would have to shell out well over a $100 - objectively
speaking, more than my entire 166 system is worth. And I
refuse to buy a crappy Chinese modem for $25 either. And so
far, I see no need for any of these actions.

2) Computer condition.

I clean my computer regularly, there are no clogged up fans, no
noises, etc etc. I have an extra fan in it, even though
AFAICT it isn't even needed in a machine with a 166. But I
turn it on sometimes on very hot days. It appears to make no
difference whatsoever except for the noise it makes.

Because of where I live, I have an AC line regulator and an
APC UPS which has also performed flawlessly for about 8
years.

I have been inside the computer often enough to know there is
nothing loose, making funny noises or turning weird colors. I
have sometimes not connected to the net for a week a time and
nothing ever happened. It simply runs perfectly.

Re: computers older than 4 or 5 years (or even 2) being NG.
Mine is the living proof of this not necessarily being the
case. When I had it built, I had to have the MB replaced 3
times. And a few other minor things. (There IS no more
quality control as you know.) But once it was running right,
it has remained running right to this day. The only thing I
have ever upgraded was the HD. Using an anti-static strap
(which most technicians don't even bother with).

Another example - I also happen to have an HP Vectra 486/66
with 16MB of Ram (which I bought used so who nows WHAT it has
been through) which also runs perfectly. I added RAM and a
CD-drive to it (had to make a hole in the top and it sits on
the box) and it still runs perfectly. I put a 28.8 Supra
modem in it and I can even connect to the Internet (although
it is slow as hell). I am sure you all know SOMEONE with an
eqaually old computer which still works fine.

I suppose as a test, I could connect the Vectra to the
internet at the same time (the 2GB P4 machine has no modem)
and do exactly the same thing and see if one or both freeze
if they do at all. But I have been told in no uncertain terms
to get a second line and leave the first one alone by a
rather important member of my family. I had the occasional
"freeze" problem with the old line and I still have it with the
new one. And since the problem is extremely intermittent in a
long-range sense, just connecting the Vectra will prove nothing
- unless I am "lucky" enough to get a "freeze" right away, which
is fairly unlikely.) Sigh.

3) Protection.

The Black Ice may be old, but it is designed (and set to
highest protection level) to block ALL entries into my
machine. The basic net protocols have not substantially
changed in decades, AFAIK. In fact, I had to manually add a
"permitted" address because it would not even let in an
atomic clock time adjustment!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aside from the fact that all the
virus scares have just become great money makers for several
corporations (although the F-Prot for DOS continues to be free
and is as good as anything else), all it takes to not get a
virus is common sense, just like with 4-dimensional viruses and
diseases.

If 80% of people didn't use IE/OE for browsing and mail and
didn't keep on clicking on unknown files with no extensions
(thank you Microsoft) or with exe or scr extensions, having
virus problems would be a rarity.

I use the DOS version of F-Prot which I upgrade every month
or two and the current version of Spybot-S&D. In 8 years I
have only once ever gotten a virus - in an email from a
friend - it couldn't do anything because I have various
prevention measures in place (like I have removed all
script-related files from win sys), but it was still a bear
to get rid of.

And once when installing a cracked program I got a call-home
file installed but since I use InControl for every install
(and even some exe's on occasion), I saw it and deleted it.

(With all due respect, please, no preaching. I happen to
believe all software for non-profit use should be free - as
some software makers do as well - see below - and most of the
cracked programs I install and play with for 10 minutes,
never use, and delete. I have OTOH paid both for the basic
retail programs I have as well as for several free ones which
I use all the time and whose authors deserved the money far
more than a greedy corporation making a bloated and
overpriced version of something an old and free DOS or Win3
program can do just as well. (OF COURSE times are changing and
there are exceptions. Still, one of the GREATEST (and flawlessly
running even on my 95B) programs I have ran across, "Paperless
Printer" IS free for non-profit use. Just one example.

I have TaskInfo 2000 which I turn on at least a couple of
times a day to make sure nothing nefarious is happening. And
I do not run quite a few of the "necessary services"
Microsoft continues to bestow more and more of upon us.

And AFAIK, it is the latest net software (especially Microsoft's
- of which I only have about 95% of what Win 95B came with) that
the newest threats are designed to crash. Anyway, I don't
crash, I freeze (see description above).

4) Possible software problems.

There is a lot of crappy software around but I have none of it
on my machine. I won't even install MS Office. There are dozens
of perfectly good (or better) free WP's and spreadsheets which
are 1/100 the size and run better. All in all, it is a fairly
simple setup because I realize its limitations. Like I said,
for stuff that needs a newer machine, I have the 2GB P4
unit.

AFA downloading "stuff" being dangerous, I guess I am just
one of the many hundreds of millions living on the edge.
99.9% of what I DL is music, and while some genius invented a
way to make a jpg screw up someone's machine if they open it
in IE/OE, AFAIK no one has done that with an mp3 or flac or
ape file yet. Anyway, I scan EVERY single file I ever dl
before I do anything with it, even those that can not
possibly be harmful.

5) Telco problems.

Even though I live in a country with a fascist telephone
monopoly, to my constant amazement I only get disconnected
every 8 hours - and I don't even need a ping program to stay
connected if I don't do anything for 3 hours!

-- -- --

Anyway... I already apologized for the length of my posts. I
just can't help it.

Once it becomes indisputable that something in my computer or
modem is the problem, I will just bite the bullet and build a
new machine for the internet (even though I will put 98SE
Lite on it and just get a 56K modem).

But I am still not convinced. Like I said, I appreciate your
comments very much, but I will wait to see if anyone has
anything else to say.

FWIW, the "freeze" has not happened in about 20 hours. Some
people claim that although a computer is made of plastic,
steel and glass etc, it still requires a variety of "magical
spells" for its semi-neural connections to learn to live in
harmony. Maybe spending 2 hours writing a post is a spell of
sorts.

Thanks again and we'll see what happens.

m.

P.S.
Just in case it may help someone make sense of my problem, I
am including 4 "tail ends" of some music files I was
downloading on various occasions when the machine froze. I
find number 4 the most interesting as its end appears (upon
closer inspection) to be a list of servers or something like
that, which could indicate the trail of something nasty which
ended up freezing the machine.

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snip

Good possibility, so have you tried substituting it with another modem?
Doesn't have to be flash as long as it works and is different.

Have you tried a different Browser, download manager, reinstalling Windows?

(more snipping)

Looks like cross linked files.

One thought; Win 95 was not that good at managing memory and it was not
uncommon for programs to 'leak' memory and use up all the 'System' resources
causing the PC to do some very odd things just before locking up.

Any way if you really want to find the cause divide the problem in half,
then divide that in half again etc.

eg, divide at the phone socket, get the other PC you mentioned and see if
that locks up, (sorry you are just going to have to do it)
If it doesn't lock up then the Telco side looks OK. Candiates halved.
Next divide at the software /hardware boundary by booting off a Linux CD and
see if it locks up then while browsing the web/downloading.
Obviously if it still locks up then it's got to be a hardware problem, if
it's OK then there is a software problem.

Just follow the divide in half rule till you narrow the problem down to the
hardware or software unit that is causing the lockup.

Final comment:
"The only thing I have ever upgraded was the HD. Using an anti-static strap
(which most technicians don't even bother with)"
Once you have seen the relative nonchalance with which boards are handled
during manufacture you too would not be to worried about AS straps,

Cheers
Paul.

 

Thank you VERY much for the follow-up full of VERY good ideas.
Putting the Supra in my machine had not occurred to me (du-uh).
Linux is sort of OOTQ since I don't have anything Linux around
and am also too dumb to get into it. Of course, the problem is
so intermittent I could be stuck with a Supra 28.8 for weeks and
never get a freeze. But it is worth a try I think. Thank you.

I use OffBy1 and Opera 7 something and XNews. Opera crashes
sometimes - but I rarely use it, OffBy1 is a hundred times
faster and I never see popups or java or flash garbage.

I have used FileHound for ages, and I have a perfectly-set up C
image backed up which I occasionally restore if something weird
happens. None of this seems to affect the problem at hand.
(Which, amusingly enough, STILL has not occurred since I first
posted this.)

Yes, but WHY? and HOW? I don't know if that question can be
answered. And while the list of NG's MAY come from my own newsrc
and the DL queue obviously comes from Xnews, the "server list"
certainly does not. It is either a trail or something from some
DNS along the way.

Since I installed a memory manager I have never had problems. I
don't run many programs at once (and I like small programs), and
always watch the memory status on my taskbar. And my free RAM
almost never falls below 16MB and I have only seen "out of
system resources" message like twice in the last few years. Then
I usually just reboot. Again, has no effect on the "freeze".

Good idea, but I can't have them connected at the SAME time,
although I could switch between them, every 30 minutes or so. Is
this what you mean?

Chuckle. I know, sometimes I am amazed that ANYTHING works at
all. Not sometimes, almost constantly, actually.

Thanks again, Paul. It's really nice to run into someone so
helpful.
m.

 

==================

Hi Paul
thanks again for your former suggestions.

I put the Supra 28.8 in my freezing 166 machine. As usually
happens, it froze within 3 minutes of connecting but then there
were about 24 hrs with no freezes and I actually started getting
hopeful (thinking that the first 3 minute-after-connecting
freeze was perhaps due to a "psycho-mechanical" system
adjustment rather than the usual reason). HAH!. Of course, after
a day or so it started up again with a vengeance (like 6 or 7
freezes per 24 hrs.)

(The funny thing was, even though I was now connecting at 28,000
instead of 38,400 bps, there was much less speed difference than
I would have expected. I guess I would probably have a heart
attack if I ever saw a good BB connection in action. Anyway...)

Another curious thing that happened with the 28.8 is that while
previously (as I believe I mentioned) if there were no
"freezes", I stayed connected for 8 hrs. and then my auto-
redialer connected me again (for the last 6 years or so with no
fail). But this time the 28.8 modem would occasionally get an
"external connection closed" or something (I forget the exact
words) message and hang up (I looked at the log), sometimes
after as little as an hour, and always before the standard 8
hours were up. Then the redial software would reconnect me and
it would be fine until the next event, whether 15 minutes or 3
hours later.

I can't help thinking that either:

a] the Supra 28.8 is more (or less) sensitive (or just
different) and responded in this manner to SOME cases of what
otherwise would have caused a freeze on my end.

b] The ISP's connection in dealing with the Supra crashed at
their end instead of freezing me (essentially the reverse of a])

(It may be worth mentioning that the even though the hardware is
older, the Supra software is actually dated later than my 95B OS
files, so it did not screw anything up system-wise. And I did a
C image restore before I put the USR back in.)

One good thing was that I saw that I have a couple of PCI slots
free - I forgot I did (both modems are ISA). So I could get a
new 56K internal modem (assuming I can find something decent in
this god forsaken dump where I live - I can't web-order because
the package will just get stolen - it's happened enough times
and I'm not doing it again). But since the problem happened with
both modems, I am pretty sure it's either the big bad internet
or something in my 166 machine - although I still consider this
doubtful since it ONLY EVER happens when I'm online.

Since I now know it happens with both modems in the 166 machine,
I guess next I should connect with the old Vectra, take a dose
of patience medication and see what happens for a few days. Big
hassle though, as the Vectra doesn't have a CD writer. But I
guess I can take out the HD and put it in my machine to copy
stuff - assuming I manage to download more than a few floppys'
worth in the first place ;-). And, frankly, I suspect it will
freeze within a few hours at most. But I could be very wrong.

IF the Vectra never freezes than it's my 166 machine - right?

IF the Vectra DOES freeze, then it's got to be something
outside, i.e. the ISP or the internet as a whole carrying some
new poison. In either case I'm screwed because there is no
chance in hell of working out any problems with this ISP (and
the 2 or 3 other ones are worse), not to mention with the
hackers (obviously).

Since I noticed about ten years ago that I seem to be getting
dumber every day, could you comment on my "logic" and these next
steps?

Or perhaps you have another good idea? (After all, it WAS you
who suggested replacing the USR 33.6 with the Supra 28.8 to see
what would happen. And it's been a few days, so I am already
dumber than I was even then. ;-(

While I really don't want to get a BB connection, just out of
curiosity - you can probably make an educated guess - do you
think this could/would happen with a BB connection?

Sorry to bother you again, and thank you again for being so
helpful.
m.

 

======

===UPDATE===

Hi Paul
thanks again for your former suggestions.

I put the Supra 28.8 in my freezing 166 machine. As usually
happens, it froze within 3 minutes of connecting but then there
were about 24 hrs with no freezes and I actually started getting
hopeful (thinking that the first 3 minute-after-connecting
freeze was perhaps due to a "psycho-mechanical" system
adjustment rather than the usual reason). HAH!. Of course, after
a day or so it started up again with a vengeance (like 6 or 7
freezes per 24 hrs.)

(The funny thing was, even though I was now connecting at 28,000
instead of 38,400 bps, there was much less speed difference than
I would have expected. I guess I would probably have a heart
attack if I ever saw a good BB connection in action. Anyway...)

Another curious thing that happened with the 28.8 is that while
previously (as I believe I mentioned) if there were no
"freezes", I stayed connected for 8 hrs. and then my auto-
redialer connected me again (for the last 6 years or so with no
fail). But this time the 28.8 modem would occasionally get an
"external connection closed" or something (I forget the exact
words) message and hang up (I looked at the log), sometimes
after as little as an hour, and always before the standard 8
hours were up. Then the redial software would reconnect me and
it would be fine until the next event, whether 15 minutes or 3
hours later.

I can't help thinking that either:

a] the Supra 28.8 is more (or less) sensitive (or just
different) and responded in this manner to SOME cases of what
otherwise would have caused a freeze on my end.

b] The ISP's connection in dealing with the Supra crashed at
their end instead of freezing me (essentially the reverse of a])

(It may be worth mentioning that the even though the hardware is
older, the Supra software is actually dated later than my 95B OS
files, so it did not screw anything up system-wise. And I did a
C image restore before I put the USR back in.)

One good thing was that I saw that I have a couple of PCI slots
free - I forgot I did (both modems are ISA). So I could get a
new 56K internal modem (assuming I can find something decent in
this god forsaken dump where I live - I can't web-order because
the package will just get stolen - it's happened enough times
and I'm not doing it again). But since the problem happened with
both modems, I am pretty sure it's either the big bad internet
or something in my 166 machine - although I still consider this
doubtful since it ONLY EVER happens when I'm online.

Since I now know it happens with both modems in the 166 machine,
I guess next I should connect with the old Vectra, take a dose
of patience medication and see what happens for a few days. Big
hassle though, as the Vectra doesn't have a CD writer. But I
guess I can take out the HD and put it in my machine to copy
stuff - assuming I manage to download more than a few floppys'
worth in the first place ;-). And, frankly, I suspect it will
freeze within a few hours at most. But I could be very wrong.

IF the Vectra never freezes than it's my 166 machine - right?

IF the Vectra DOES freeze, then it's got to be something
outside, i.e. the ISP or the internet as a whole carrying some
new poison. In either case I'm screwed because there is no
chance in hell of working out any problems with this ISP (and
the 2 or 3 other ones are worse), not to mention with the
hackers (obviously).

Since I noticed about ten years ago that I seem to be getting
dumber every day, could you comment on my "logic" and these next
steps?

Or perhaps you have another good idea? (After all, it WAS you
who suggested replacing the USR 33.6 with the Supra 28.8 to see
what would happen. And it's been a few days, so I am already
dumber than I was even then. ;-(

Sorry to bother you again, and thank you again for being so
helpful.
m.

 

snip

The limiting factor restricting your 'speed' may not be your modem.

In between your modem and your ISP's modem, there is a telephone network.
Electro-mechanical problems in the telephone network could create exactly
the symptoms you describe. Only your telephone company can do anything
about that (apart from you making sure that none of the equipment,
connectors, or wires on your side of the telephone conection is faulty or
overloaded).

Changing from dial-up to xDSL may or may not bypass the problem with the
telephone system, depending on where the problem is.

snip

If you need to use software to operate the modem, then it is a 'software
modem' or 'winmodem'; that means that if the modem throws a wobbly, it can
interact with other software running on your Windows system and that may
be the cause of your 'freezes'. If using a different winmodem with
different software changes the symptoms, that seems to reinforce the
possibility that problems with your telephone line are upsetting your
modem, but different modems react slightly differently and so you get a
different pattern of 'freezes'.

Using a real modem (one that has its own hardware for doing everything and
needs no special software) would isolate the modem from the rest of your
system and mean that if or when the modem does 'crash' it doesn't take your
PC with it. The blinking lights on the front of an external hardware modem
can also indicate more detail about what the modem is actually doing,
which can help diagnosis of problems - and you can reboot the modem
without affecting the computer.