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May 19th, 2006

Dial-up boxes

I have a technical conundrum. It is to do with dial-up boxes. I know that no-one uses dial-up except me any more, but if you can try to cast your minds back it would be much appreciated. Take these two dial-up boxes:

dial up box

The one on the left is the Good dial-up box. This is the one that Outlook Express makes. This one connects you to the internet and generally causes joy and happiness.

The one on the right is the Evil dial-up box. This is the one Firefox makes and also I think Internet Explorer does too. This one is rubbish. Let me explain why.

First of all, the Evil Dial-up box doesn’t work. This I can live with, because I have the Good dial-up box. I have need for the Evil box, as I have the Good dial-up box.

But here is the thing. When one is offline the Good dial-up box thinks to itself, ‘Oooh look, he is offline. I will sit here quietly in the background and not do anything, because I am not required’. Not so the Evil dial-up box. It thinks to itself ‘Oooh look, he is offline. I wonder if he wants to go online? I think I’ll just pop up and ask.’ This then means that when I am typing a document the cursor will suddenly go into the Username field of the Evil dial-up box and the flow of my work and concentration will be interrupted. Unfortunately the Evil dial-up box is too stupid to not repeat its mistake a minute later, and a minute after than, and so on.

If someone can explain how to make the Evil dialup box go away I would be most pleased. I have tweaked every blessed setting there is, but there must be another blessed setting that I have not tweaked. Thank you!

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This is a single post on the Cartoon Blog by Dave posted on Friday, May 19th, 2006 at 9:00 am. Click here to read all of the latest posts. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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6 Responses to “Dial-up boxes”


  1. Tiffer says:

    I have had this problem in the past. I think one way to sort it is to make sure you have no programs which regurally try and contact the outside world, including windows! I would recomment getting zonealarm and using its “lock” function which cuts out all in going and outgoing traffic. Might not work though.

    Someone else might know a tick box somewhere, probably only accessible in DOS!

    May 19th, 2006 at 9:35 am
  2. Moog says:

    Have you consulted the book of common prayer? I’m not too familiar with it, but we methodists have an effective liturgy in our worship book for such situations*. A quick visit from your presbyter and a run through of the said liturgy will usually rid your system of the said evil dial up box.

    *I actually can’t verify the existance of such liturgy, but the worship book is quite thick, and probably contains some liturgy for such occasions.

    May 19th, 2006 at 11:53 am
  3. Michelle says:

    Does clicking the ‘File’ and then ‘work offline’ thingy make the evil box go away?

    May 19th, 2006 at 4:25 pm
  4. Aumgn says:

    Dave,

    a suggestion:

    go to your Control Panel and then click on the ‘Internet Options’ icon. When the dialogue box opens up, go to the ‘Connections’ tab. On the connection tab, click the ‘Never dial a connection’ radio button. Press OK and see what happens.

    May 19th, 2006 at 6:03 pm
  5. jarod says:

    DELETE it!

    May 19th, 2006 at 8:42 pm
  6. Dave says:

    Thanks for the ideas. Michelle – I’ll give yur idea a go, but I think I must have tried it. Aumgn – that sort of works in that neither box pops up, but it means that when I do want to connect the evil dial-up box is all I get. Unfortunately the evil box doesn’t seem to work with my bt dialup for some reason.

    May 20th, 2006 at 2:38 pm