DSL, Dial-Up and Earthlink

[Karen Wheless]

My Dad has an Earthlink account that has been completely messed up,
mostly by Earthlink itself, I think. I'm trying to diagnose his problem
long distance, and I'm completely baffled.

He has an iMac running OS 9.2. Originally he had Earthlink dialup.
Then he switched to Earthlink DSL (using MacPOET). Then, after having
problems with MacPOET, he was switched to Enternet. This worked fine
for almost 2 years.

He just moved, and has had to switch back to dial up. He called
Earthlink to get help on using dial-up and I think they completely
screwed up his configuration (for a while, he was connecting using
Remote Access and his DSL modem - I can't figure that out at all.) Now
he can't get connected at all - he was on the phone with earthlink for
several hours and I think they just made it worse.

He's connected via the internal modem. When he tries to use Remote
Access he gets the following message:

Connecting to PPPoE: 2014492

and then he gets the error message: "There was no carrier signal".

I can't figure out why Remote Access is saying "Connecting to PPPoE".
The only thing I can think is that something is misconfigured (maybe
Enternet?) but there's nothing obvious. I tried deleting his TCP/IP
preferences and his Remote Access preferences, but that didn't help.
TCP/IP seems to be correctly configured (to use PPP) as far as I can
tell, and Remote Access has his proper ID, password, access number.

The only other thing I can think of doing it to reinstall his system
software, but I really don't want to do that if he doesn't have to -
he's a computer novice and I think it will just be a huge mess.

Does this connection message make any sense to anyone, and is there a
way to fix it?

Thanks for your help,
Karen

[Bill Rowe]

In article <1g1nbdp.z5h18b60z5s6N%regencyreader@yahoo.com>,
[email]regencyreader@yahoo.com[/email] (Karen Wheless) wrote:

> My Dad has an Earthlink account that has been completely messed up,
> mostly by Earthlink itself, I think. I'm trying to diagnose his problem
> long distance, and I'm completely baffled.

<snip>

> He's connected via the internal modem. When he tries to use Remote
> Access he gets the following message:

> Connecting to PPPoE: 2014492

> and then he gets the error message: "There was no carrier signal".

PPPoE is the protocol used with DSL. It sounds like the system is trying
to make a PPPoE connection as it would have for DSL and is talking to
the DSL modem.

<snip>

> The only other thing I can think of doing it to reinstall his system
> software, but I really don't want to do that if he doesn't have to -
> he's a computer novice and I think it will just be a huge mess.

Before trying to reinstall the system software, try using the Extensions
Manager to disable all third party extensions, leaving only Apple
extensions and reboot. That should leave Remote Access and other things
needed for a dial up connection still enabled. Now try making the
connection after ensuring the approriate entries are made.