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Last week I replaced a dial up modem for a client who had been hit by lightning. Got his phones too. The pc seems to work fine when I get there other than the modem is shot. No biggie, I slap a new one in and all is fine til last night. He calls(late i might add lol) and says he cant get on now and is getting an "error 692". I goggled that it is says it could be a hardware malfunction. Just wondering is it possible that the lightning may have damaged something else and possibly got some quirky voltages now or am I trying to make things too complicated? It is an old box, compaq with a 450mhz cpu with 128m in it. Neither of us want to deal with buying a new modem every week. I dont know if hes ready to buy a new pc or not but Im kinda worried that maybe something isnt right after that storm. What you guys think?

Well error 692 is a hardware issue with the modem itself. It's possible the PCI slot that the modem was connected to was damaged. I doubt it - usually if a surge gets that far, it takes the whole mobo out since the bus is not isolated.

You rarely see a surge or lightning damage anything more than the modem or NIC it went through because all modern cards use opto isolators. Also cable and DSL modems themselves have quite a lot of internal surge protection.

Some suggestions:

- Try moving the modem to a different slot

- Make sure no other devices connected to the phone line are damaged. For instance you may have a phone that's sending voltage down the phone line. The phone may be working but it's causing problems.

- May just be a bad modem from the factory. If you have a receipt, then exchange the modem and see if that one behaves.

- Did you uninstall the drivers for the old modem?

- Could be something as simple as the card is not fully seated in the slot. It sounds like it's an old PC - some of those old cheap cases don't allow the cards to seat properly unless you bend the card bracket up a bit.

- Make sure he notifies the phone company that he took a surge/lightning hit. There's usually a surge suppressor on the phone line outside in the phone box. More than likely it's toast. He'll want to have it replaced.

Hope this helps...

Im going back over there today. Ill check the phones and see how everything is wired up. He gets his phone service through the cable company but I have no idea why he wants dial up over a cable modem

Hmmm.. if the modem took a hit, and he's using VOIP, I'd suspect his VOIP box is damaged or defective.

Why the hell is he using dialup if he has VOIP via cable? If he's using Comcaset they have a $25 a month economy plan now.

Ive been thinking the same thing FP. Well i just got back from his house and I got it going. I swapped the slot the modem was in and also unhooked the phone he had plugged into the modem and she fired right up. Not sure which one helped but its working now. He said the cable company fixed the voip box but didnt replace the wall jack or the line so he may still have problems. Its not Comcast but NewWave Communications. Shitty company but an easy $40 for me

Sometimes you get weird issues with motherboards. Two instances come to mind. One was a PCI slot that would fry anything inserted into it. Just one slot though, that is what made it odd, but lightning can cause unusual issues.

The other insance is a motherboard that had its entire PCI bus shot and PS/2 ports as well. The only things that worked oddly enough was the USB and the ISA slots. Other than that, it worked perfectly.

Kind of odd to use dial-up on a VOIP service which tends to use a cable modem... Only reason I could think of is someone using so much bandwidth they needed just a little bit to do simple stuff... Perhaps he has cable internet and doesn't really know...