Well, I think I've solved it. I went into the accelerator program (Bellsouth Accelerator) and changed the setting from maximum to low acceleration. The smilies started to work! I'm going to try different speeds of accelaration and see when the cut-off is that "disables" the smilies, but apparently for mine the problem was the accelerator. dlshaffer, do you use dial up with an accelerator like I do?
Hugs ,