dial-up connection problem

[osci]

Hi all, I'm not sure if to post here or another section, but here goes, i'm sure mods will move if deemed neccessary.

I'm having trouble with my dial-up connection, for the life of me I don't know whats going on.

I can turn the pc on and open IE and the dialog box with my internet connection comes up and then I click connect and it connects without any problems, then when I close down IE the dialog comes with stay connected or disconnect! the above is not a problem

However, if i turn on the pc & use other programs such as itunes or even play games, if I then go to connect to the internet when I open IE the connection dialog box will not come up, so to connect to the internet I manually have to go to start>then click connect to my isp., once I am connected its no problems but when I then close IE the dialog box does not appear it remains connected.

To try to fix this problem I deleted my internet connection and used the connection wizard to create a new connection, everythings seems fine for the first couple of times, but as soon as I use another program on my pc the problems as described with internet connection resurface/occurr.

does anyone have any idea of what is going on here, i don't know if its hardware or software problems, my system is as follows

IE 7
Windows XP SP2
Core duo CPU
1 gig ddr2 ram
80gig hdd (with approx 5 gig free)

using XP's inbuilt firewall, avg antivirus which checks for updates when I connect

any ideas, I don't know what to do?

[osci]

Ok it appears I have fixed the problem (fingers crossed), as I stated above, running XP with SP2 and remember the auto updater installed IE7 and it was around that time my problem appeared, so I have uninstalled IE7 and reverted back to IE6, everything running ok for the time being now?

[BCNZ]

IE is junk, that is your first problem. Get Firefox. Anything but IE.

Second, Windows is not good at doing anything that well - so asking it to remember to pop up a connection box is like asking Oprah to drop by for a coffee... chances are, it won't happen.

When I used dial-up many years ago, I had an icon on the desktop to connect, and used to right click on the two flashing lights in the system tray and select 'Disconnect'. Worked well.

[osci]

IE is junk, that is your first problem. Get Firefox. Anything but IE.

Second, Windows is not good at doing anything that well - so asking it to remember to pop up a connection box is like asking Oprah to drop by for a coffee... chances are, it won't happen.

When I used dial-up many years ago, I had an icon on the desktop to connect, and used to right click on the two flashing lights in the system tray and select 'Disconnect'. Worked well.

since i rolled back to IE6 from ie7 it hasn't missed a beat, very happy with that, although I do have firefox ready to install should Ihave any issues.