I have a Pentium III running Windows98 SE and I use Internet Explorer. When I try to log on to the internet through Internet Explorer I get a ‘no dial tone’, ‘busy signal’, or ‘incorrect password’ message. Nothing I do including a restart will fix it. However, if I connect through Outlook first, close it, and try Internet Explorer it usually works fine. Occasionally, even when connecting through Outlook, I get these messages and have to hard boot the machine to get it to work. Even more strangely I have tried to remove ‘RealPlayer’ from loading at startup but after this I cannot log onto the internet, even through Outlook. If I put RealPlayer back into the startup everything works again. What could be happening here?

I have never seen anything quite like this situation. One of my colleagues thinks that it may be happening because there are two dial-up connections with only one having the correct configuration. It is possible that when you launch Outlook, it uses the correct dial-up connection which is why you can successfully connect. However, when you try and connect through Internet Explorer it tries to connect using the dial-up connection with the wrong configuration. To check this, go to ‘Start’ menu > ‘Settings’ > ‘Dial-up Networking’. If there is more than one connection, check each by attempting to make a connection. Then delete the connection which doesn’t work. Make sure that you now only have one connection in dial-up networking. If you still have more than one, delete all the connections to your ISP except the one good connection which works. Your RealPlayer problem is baffling. My colleague suggested that this behaviour may have something to do with the fact that RealPlayer is a DUN (Dial-up Networking) enabled application and may be somehow triggering the connection. However, we cannot find an explanation for this problem. If either or both of the problems persist, try deleting all your Dial-up Networking icons and start from scratch. Finally, if you are still having problems after this, please contact me again. Also, if you could supply me with some more information particularly when this problem first occurred and if you did any maintenance on your computer which may have triggered the problem (eg. installing new software), etc… it would be most appreciated. I would like to thank Matthew Horoschun for his help with this problem.