Modem acting very odd

[tamilynn63]

I lost access to the internet last year and had no time to figure out problem so I bought a new pc. A year later I am here messing with it again. I have managed to figure out that is has nothing to do with settings or missing files or other. Now if I can figure out how to fix the problem .

The modem would dial and error would say that the number being called was not answering. This happened for hours and days........until this am I took my land-line and pushed the speaker button so I could hear how my PC was sounding while trying to dial.
Here is the mystery. I connected! So I hung my speaker phone up and lost the connection too.I have now done this a several times to make sure it was not a coincidence. Each time I have to lift the receiver on other phone while modem is dialing in order to connect and cannot hang it up or it will be lost. I tried a different phone line that was shorter than the last one and it wasn't fazed.Troubleshooting my modem does not bring up anything either. Any idea on what is causing this and what to adjust first?

running HP Pav win 98SE, 256K

 

[kiwiguy]

Likely a hardware fault in the modem (lightning surge etc)

Windows simply cannot "see" any subtle hardware faults on the output side, so it thinks its working OK.