Hi wildthing, Thanks for your thoughts, but I think we may be a bit at cross purposes. The Win98SE system is my old defunct system and it worked. The new system is under XP control and it is this that won't work. I can find a "wait for dial tone" checkbox in the XP setup too and it is checked - but surely if it isn't my modem can't dial to the ISP's server? But I will try it!