Ok. Not sure where to put this one, but here we go.
A friend of mine has a XP box that within the last week or so (no software has been installed subsequent of this) if there is a CD playing in the drive (music cd), the net stops responding. If he takes the CD out, the net starts working again. He's on dialup if that makes a difference...
Internal modem are more resources hungry than external modems, plus when the CDROM is playing music, I think it takes up more resources which could interfear with the data transfer rate via the modem.
I've had a long time with dial up too (was on BBS back on the day)... damn i feel old...
anyway. Yeah. That is what was weird. Think there may be some sort of conflict, but since i've had very, very limited exposure to XP, I thought I'd ask around a bit.