Hi All.

Have had 3 modems. Tech guy has come out 3 times (they missed an appointment and never showed up), so that would make 4 appointments.

The last being last Saturday. He did not do any re-wiring yet, telling me "it's your phone, there is a short in your phone, so switch the phone". and he said further "if this does not fix it, tell my supervisor and I'll come out, put in a new phone line in your house, give you new jacks, etc and that should do it"

I said "what if it's the wiring on the street, I mean, cmon, it's old"

He said"yeah, that's true but we have to do it this way first"

So he left, and that night, IT HAPPENED AGAIN, the green dsl light started blinking, we lose the connection for 2 minutes or so, then it rights itself" I disconnect that phone from the wall jack and all I had was the dsl modem connected to that particular jack. Made no difference. So I put the phone back because to me, IT'S NOT THE PHONE that's making the problem.

I am NOT calling again because I can't make an appointment because Alan has doctor visits this week and I'll worry about this later. I mean, it works most of the time, but we lose service after an hour (or after 3),

I can't stand this thing so I really don't care any more.

So here are my thoughts. What if it's NOT the phone lines, what if it's my computer. I know someone that this happened to already. They had a virus.

Now I have all the anti-virus stuff and spyware stuff but as you know, one cannot catch ALL of them.

And my computer has been acting extremely flaky for some time. Things popping up, and it had a crash report the other day but it fixed itself.

Here is what I want to do.

I want to borrow my friend's laptop. I want to use it for a few hours. If there is NO BLINKING light in the dsl thing, that will tell me that it's NOT the phone line, right?

And I would not download anything on her laptop, just go on various sites and do what I do. Maybe some forums, maybe IMDB. Sites that are safe I mean.

So am I correct in that to accomplish this, I simply unplug the ethernet cable from the back of my computer tower and just replug it into the laptop.

I don't have to do anything else right? I don't have to worry about mouse, keyboard, anything else, right? The laptop is self sufficient right?

I just want to make sure of how to hook up this laptop to the internet. I gather I would plug the laptop into the electric outlet, connect the ethernet cable and I'm good to go?

did I get this right?

And if it goes well, then I'll find out it was MY computer all along, and then I can give her back her laptop and we can make a decision on whether to replace the desktop with another desktop or a laptop.

Thanks much.

Melody