Modem signals busy, but is connected

[George Haviland]

I have an HP Pavillion ze5600 notebook with a Conexant 56k ACLink modem. I'm attempting to dial into a citrix server in New York from Florida. When I complete the dialing, the modem shows as returning a busy signal. When I connect another phone on the line while dialing, I actually hear a connection on the citrix end, that never completes the connection. Very infrequently, I can make a successful connection. Can someone suggest a solution to this?

[Ron Kinner]

We had a problem like that once. Turned out they had connected the remote server to a telephone line that was part of a rotary hunt group with 5 other lines. The call would get to the modem only about 1 out of 6 times.

Verify that the phone line works correctly by dialing the NY citrix server on a regular telephone. You should hear the modem pickup and squeal at you. Hangup, wait 15 seconds and redial. Does the modem pickup again? If so then that's not the problem.

You can open a Hyperterm session to the port that the modem is on and talk directly to it. Type

at&fe1m1

and it should come back with an OK. (We just told it to reset to factory defaults and turn echo on so we can see what we type and also to turn on the speaker so we can hear it dial.)

ath1

will just take it off hook. You should heard the dial tone.

ath0

hangs up. Dialtone should stop.

Now dial your number:

atdt xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

where xxxxxxxxxxxx is the phone number exactly as you would dial it from an analog phone plugged into this jack. You should hear the dial tone and then the number being dialed.

Do you hear a busy tone or does it just ring or does the modem pickup?

If the modem picks up and squeals at you but your modem doesn't answer then it's probably a hardware failure. Does the modem work to call an ISP or a bulletin board? If not, you can try uninstalling it and then rebooting and letting windows find it again but you may need the driver for it so make sure you have a copy handy. If that fails you will need to get an external modem or a card bus modem.

It is possible that the problem is on the other end. You can set up a modem to only connect at a certain speed with a certain error correcting protocol and if the line is so bad that it can't work at that speed then it will hang up on you. Make sure you are calling via a good toll quality circuit. Many of the cheap pay in advance phone cards use low bit rate voice which won't carry a modem very well.

Ron