How do I fix my dial-up modem after being in a lightning storm?

If the internal modem is not easily replaceable there are USB modems.
I sometimes work for a small dial-up ISP and many new computers don't have a modem and have no other way to install one.

From experience the easiest way to progress is to obtain a cheap USB modem.
It will either work, issue resolved, or not thus disproving the modem as being at fault.
I always used to keep an old USB modem lying around for emergencies and just such events as you have experienced.

The exact thing happened to me here one night some years back during a storm so silent I wasn't even aware of it until a blinding flash of lightning came. Fried the modem in the laptop right away. No one could get inside it to repair it, so I went on eBay and bought a small external one for five bucks plus shipping. I'm on broadband now but that little piece of hardware saved my bacon and kept me from having to simply throw out an otherwise fine laptop. Now, to get it online through the broadband modem, I use a pair of plug links with my router. Perfect. I have use of my desktop AND the security of knowing my laptop is functional when I need it.

You said "I unplugged the phone and hooked it up to that connection and it still says "no dial tone". It sounds like the problem is the phone line connection to the laptop is defective.
Try connecting you laptop to another phone jack.

“... a lightening storm ...”

How could possibly a storm be lightening???... A storm can only make things _harder_ for you! For instance, this particular storm wrecked your dial-up modem. Probably, it was the lightning that often accompanies a storm that did the job......

Oxford University Press:

lighten (verb)

1 [transitive] lighten something
to reduce the amount of work, debt, worry, etc. that somebody has
-- Synonym: lessen
* equipment to lighten the load of domestic work
* The measures will lighten the tax burden on small businesses.

2 [intransitive, transitive]
to become or make something become brighter or lighter in colour
*The sky began to lighten in the east.
* lighten something: Use bleach to lighten the wood.

3 [intransitive, transitive]
to feel or make somebody feel less sad, worried or serious
-- Synonym: cheer
* lighten (up): My mood gradually lightened.
* lighten something (up): She told a joke to lighten the atmosphere.

4 [transitive] lighten something
to make something lighter in weight

Heaven forbid that I or any of my staff ever make a typo.

05-May-2012

You will need far more than a Surge Protector to save your electronic components from Lightning! Surge Protectors are good for surges and spikes. I used a good and expensive Surge Protector, but inside my modem was a melted mess of electronic components after the telephone cables had been hit by a Lightning Strike. Lightning can be anything from 1 billion to 6 billion volts and up to many thousand amps! You would need a very large Lightning Arrestor to stop this. At the first sign of a storm, either disconnect (remove plugs from sockets) or at least, get very prepared to do so, and do it when you hear the first rumbling of thunder in the distance.

@Robert, I agree that the cheap surge protectors from Home Depot or Target will not help much if you have a surge caused by lightning. However, a UPS typically comes with surge protection and a lot of them even provide a connected device warranty such that if you computer is damaged by lightning while connected to the UPS, the UPS manufacturer will pay to have your computer repaired or replaced. That is another option that is much cheaper than a whole house lightning arrestor.

Finally, I have one quibble about lightning voltage. Typical lightning voltage is 10 to 120 million volts. While this is a huge value, it is over an order of magnitude less than 1 to 6 billion volts.

Peter

It might be worth a shot to first try removing the modem in device manager and then rebooting so that it finds it and reinstalls the modem. I've had some luck with this method that seems to fix some malfunctioning devices.

"... a typo ...”

!

Hardly, shall we say. "E" is adjacent neither to "t" nor to "n", on any keyboard. BTW, learning words is not embarrassing. Objecting to it is.

Very well. As we did with the original error, I'll correct my comment: Heaven forbid that I or any of my staff ever make a typo mistake.

06-May-2012

I had a strange lightning incident a couple of weeks ago. A bolt struck very close to the house. I have DSL. Lost internet access, but all power and phone lines were fine. Turned out only the phone jack on my surge protector was fried. Connecting the DSL modem directly to the phone wall jack solved the problem. {flame deleted}