I occasionally visit old programs, and before I had DSL they were set to initialize the dialup connection when I started the program. I think I've finally removed those now.

One way to avoid the automatic attempt to dialup is to limit what is even allowed to load when you start your computer. I tried several programs, and in the process lost more than I really wanted to as far as cookies, caches items, temporary files, etc. It took out some "rarely used" stuff that I had to reproduce. I have found that the little program called "StartUP" helped identify what should start and what should just sit there until I click on it. You'll find the program several places. I think I followed a link from Mudcat, or maybe found it at Tucows.com. http://www.mlin.net/ is a little freeware program (but it doesn't hurt to tip the author!).

SRS