Houston, We Have a Problem!

We've had our current PC for nearly 3 years now and in that time we've never had to re-install anything, it's chugged along merrily but over time, it's got slower and slower. On Friday night I decided to do something about it, something we had to every 6 months on the old PC, insert the system restore disk!

We've both done this so many times we didn't think we would have any problems, how wrong we were! I had got all the required disks together before starting and backed up all the photo's and stuff we wanted to keep. I had, however, forgotten about the set up disk for the Speedtouch 330 ADSL modem. I inserted the restore CD and got everything as it was when we originally bought the PC then left it at that as it was getting late.

Saturday morning came and the first thing to install was the BT connection software, I did that and it was at that point I realized we were missing a disk. We searched the house from the loft to the garden shed but the little box that the modem came in was nowhere to be found. The air turned blue at that point but we did eventually calm down and I managed to nip out and download the required modem driver onto a disk.

I wiped the PC again and started from scratch, installed the modem driver but when asked to plug in the modem, even though XP installed it, the set up wizard wouldn't continue, it just said the modem wasn't there and to check the connections etc. The modem diagnostics showed that the modem was functioning correctly but the ADSL synchronization was pending.

That's as far as we got, despite being on the phone to BT India all day Saturday who were about as much use as chocolate fireguard. They even suggested using the XP backup point feature to restore to when the internet was working. I tried explaining that since we've used the system restore CD 4 times today, the only backup point is 3.30pm, it was no use though, since the answer was not on their list, it didn't compute and we were back to "peas kick on tart".

BT are sending us a new set-up CD out in the post which should arrive mid week, we're not sure which one it is, we asked for a CD for the modem, it wouldn't surprise me if ABBA's Greatest Hits turned up.

Paul.