Modem Query

[Peking Duck]

Hi. I would be most grateful for any advice on the following that could be offered by some of the experts here. I have a Toshiba Satellite A30 laptop, and I think I may have damaged the internal modem by inadvertently connecting the machine to a digital telephone system in a hotel here in Beijing. For example, the COM port no longer shows up on the list of ports, and the modem cannot find a dial tone even though there is one when you use the phone line.

I want to continue to use the laptop to access the internet through dial-up connection when I return to the UK soon. I am not sure if it is cost-effective to replace the internal modem. My question is, is it possible to get an external USB modem that will allow me to use a dial-up connection as opposed to ADSL? Alternatively, the laptop has a PCMCIA card slot, are there modems available that would slot into this and allow me to bypass the internal modem and also use dial-up?

Many thanks in advance of any help.

PD

[Peking Duck]

Many thanks for the reply. I had not tried removing and re-installing, but when I did this, I still had the same result. Using the Troubleshoot feature indicated that the COM port was not enabled, and I think I have got some hardware damage.

Anyway it looks as though there are plenty of options for a USB or PCMCIA card modem so I shall pursue one of those.

Thanks a lot again.

PD