Hi, I'm trying to get a friends laptop back on the net. He has a HP Compaq NX9020 laptop. A few years back his internal modem packed in. Since then he's been using a external usb one with no probs. Last week this external modem fried possibly due to the thunder we had. Anyway I got him a new usb external modem and it installs fine. The problem arises though when upon next reboot the laptop finds the original modem (built in one) and automatically installs it. Fine you may say, but it seems to knock the newly installed usb one out of sync. So I tried removing the built in one in hardware manager, reinstalling the drivers for the new usb one and yes it works. This happens EVERY reboot though. How do I stop windows from installing the old broken pci modem every time? PS. I tried physically removing it but can't seem to find it!? Any help would be apprieciated.
Rather than uninstalling the modem, try disabling it in the Hardware Manager, that way it won't be used or recognised, plus you don't have to keep doing it every time you boot the machine up. If someone else can provide details as to how to locate and remove the internal modem, obviously that would be a better alternative, but I don't have that knowledge I'm afraid. Hope what I've suggested helps.
Yea I tried disabling the pci modem in device manager, then updating the usb modem drivers but still nothing. The usb modem cannot detect a 'tone' if the pci modem is in device manager. I really can't see why the above doesn't work. Logically it should.... Disable pci modem, update usb modem drivers and away you go, but it's still a no go...
Try going into BIOS and (it depends on your particular BIOS) look under "Integrated Peripherals" and look for, (I think) "Onboard MC'97 modem" and disable it.
