Customer calls saying his ADSL internet connection has suddenly stopped working.

One minute he is surfing the net, the next minute he just gets page not found.

I take a look. The first thing I notice, is the little icon in the task bar, saying that the network cable is unplugged.

I check the cable, and its plugged in correctly. The ethernet socket is built in to the motherboard, and has 2 small LEDs, but they are not lit up.

The second thing I notice, is that he has 128 Mb of RAM… making the computer horribly slow. He has DDR 266 (which I don’t carry around with me), so I cannot install more RAM to speed things up.

OK… change the ethernet cable: problem is still there.

reset the modem… problem still there.

plugin another ethernet card (by coincidence its by the same manufacturer)… the new cards is detected by XP, but it still thinks no cable is connected.

I’d like to try the the USB connection on the modem, but customer cannot find the modem CD (with the USB driver for windows)

Looks like all I can do is declare a faulty modem.

Customer agrees, and gets himself a new modem the next day.

He then rings up… not happy, as he is getting exactly the same problem with a new dlink modem…

I return and take a look… yep, same problem (even with the ethernet cable supplied with the modem).

Now I can try the USB port, and that works perfectly.

Without spending a lot more time, I can just suspect a faulty network card (maybe even my own card is faulty), or a windows problem (I’ve not seen XP) suddenly stop accepting an ethernet card.

Customer also admits that for many months, the internet would suddenly drop out, and a restart of the modem usually fixed it.

Well, this will probably remain a mystery (he had an antivirus… norton I think… but if I overlooked the security, then an infection is a possible cause).