Ticking Noise on my BT Line

[Kev]

The telephone line in the upstairs of my house has developed a loud regular ticking noise that is an inconvenience when using the phone but stops the computer dialing up the internet. The downstairs is ok so I obviously suspect the junction that splits the line to the upstairs and downstairs but I can't see how a dodgey conncetion should produce such a fault. I have switched broadband filters around in case they were faulty but to no avail. There does seem to be something wrong with the broadband as the connection details were deleted from the computer soem time last night when my son was using the computer and now I can't reconnect so is it possible that the modem has a fault and is making this noise?

Kevin

[Ian Stirling]

Have you disconnected all phones/modems, and tried one phone in all sockets? If not, do that.

[No Thanks]

If you are on Broadband, why would you want to dial up the internet? How do you access the net?

[Kev]

I've tried that on the upstairs only but the computer/telephone connects via an extention lead because the telephone point is behind a bookcase so the extenstion lead is another point of failure but I need to shift the bookcase to do a thorough check. I think that there is a lesson there somewhere.

Kevin

[.]

have you or a neighbour recently installed a wireless access point ?

reason I ask is that I was on the landline to my BiL and we could both hear a regular ticking noise. we put it down to him being in a hotel and there being interference at his end but then the mrs phoned me and the ticking was still audible so the problem was local to me.

turns out that my W.A.P was switched on and close to a telephone in another room. switched it off, it stopped, switched it back on, it came back. moved the W.A.P away from the phone and the ticking is no more.

just a thought.

[Aidan]

Any electro-mechanical clocks nearby? Had something similar.

[Weatherlawyer]

I had a buzzing phone that made speaking over it quite difficult. It gradually worsened until I realised the set was getting hot. I replaced it and things are OK now. I had no idea they could be so dangerous. I stripped the machine but could see no obvious heat damage.

I had on numerous occasions dropped it from the wall it was mounted on. It was inconvenient there after I placed my PC desk under it. I just never got around to moving it, not realising the need.

It is the same phone I have used after twice suffering lighning strikes. So who can say what the cause was. Now I am stuck with an old phone that doesn't have an answering recorder. I wonder if I shall ever get around to replacing that.

[Kev]

Only that the broadband connection got corrupted and I had to re-install it. I now don't seem to be able to reconnect the broadband but this was at about 10pm last night so tech support was closed for the day.

Kevin

[John Rumm]

OK, reading between the lines, it sounds like you have a USB ADSL modem on your system that still operates a kind of "dial-up" connection procedure through windows[1].

If this is the case, windows will often be configured to confirm the dialup before it does it. When this happens it often prompts with the username and password displayed in edit boxes - often one of these is highlighted - making it very easy to accidentally erase one of them by pressing a key at the wrong moment. If you have details of your account and password try reentering these just in case.

Time to get a decent ISP with 24/7 support perhaps?

[1] The first recommendation would be to ditch this USB device ASAP and get yourself a router (lots of reasons for this that I will gloss over here for the mo!) but have a read from the "Do I need a special "modem" for ADSL?" section here for a bit of background information:

[Dave]

What operating system are you using on your computer?

Dave