Never worked right....
Written: Feb 13 '02
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Product Rating:
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Pros: When it works it's fast
Cons: Poor customer support
The Bottom Line: Too many problems to be recommended. 3Com can't offer me a viable solution and are leaving me out in the cold.
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| maniac_00's Full Review: 3Com HomeConnect DSL Modem (3CP3617B-VZN) |
I got this modem as part of a promotion at work. I was excited that I'd be getting this little device free and was eager to install it. However, as soon as I installed this ADSL modem into my computer (following all instructions), I got a blue screen of death on startup (Fatal Exception 0E....). The culprit: 3CWTL98.vxd. I thought, "ok....this is odd...." and restarted my computer.
It started up fine and then after registering the modem, I was up and running. Download speeds were great and I had no troubles playing online games.
A week went by with no problem, but then I started my computer up and WHAM! Fatal Exception in vxd 3CWTL98. Arrrgghh! So I started it again and kept on getting the error. After about 10 reboots, it finally went to Windows 98 and worked fine.
This happened continually. Some days it would boot up with no problem. Other times, vxd error for 20 reboots. After calls to the ISP help desk, still nothing was resolved; Help desk=completely useless. After a lengthy email to their support line, I was given 3Com's Canadian help desk. Their "help" was no help at all.
To let you get an idea of what I've done myself to try to fix this, here's an outline of what I've done:
a) reinstalled modem
b) taken devices (i.e. ethernet card, 56k modem) out
c) reformatted hard drive and Win98 and then installed modem
d) changed out RAM
e) called ISP and 3Com help desks numerous times
f) updated motherboard BIOS
g) installed latest drivers for chipset
h) installed latest drivers for all other components
i) tried my friend's modem (exact same model) and installed with his install disk.
and to let you know what hardware:
-Gigabyte 7ZX motherboard w/ onboard sound and VIA chipset
-AMD 850 MHz Duron
-256 mb RAM
-ATI RADEON 7500 (retail)
Due to the fact that I tried a different modem, I would have to say that the internal modem is conflicting with some piece of hardware in my system, most likely my motherboard. However, the support for this product has been less than stellar. What option am I left with? To go buy another modem? What kind of support is that?
All in all, this internal ADSL modem has been nothing but a pain for me. When my computer actually does boot up, it works great. However, after speaking with an actual field technician yesterday, I would have to not recommend this product to anybody. He said that they have had numerous problems with this internal modems and highly recommended the external modems.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): Free
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Epinions.com ID:
maniac_00
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Location: Calgary, AB, Canada
Reviews written: 5
Trusted by: 0 members
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