Alright, I've been dual booting Mandriva 10.1 and Windows XP on a HP computer and I would like to fully switch to Linux for better stability and security. However, I cannot configure my computer with DrakConnect to connect to internet. The modem I'm using is Linux compatible - its a Best Data V.92/V.44 External Modem (connected through a serial port) and does work with Windows XP just fine. My dial up provider is Earthlink. I've done some research on Earthlink and linux and I've found a lot of successful stories. I've only tried using DrakConnect since I don't know of another possible way to do this. After putting in my data (username, password, port modem is connected to) and testing the modem to see if it will connect I'll get the background noise from the modem and then a window appears saying 'it seems like your computer did not connect to the internet, please try to use network configuration again.' (not exact wording, but close enough) Do I have to put any information under IP parameters, DNS parameters, or Domains to get my modem to connect? Or is there something else I'm doing wrong?

Please keep in mind I am still very new to Mandriva (and Linux altogether). If you need more information to help solve this, I'm willing to do what it takes.

When I used an external modem I always used kppp to configure the connection (kppp is part of the kdenetwork package).
Install it, run kppp and go to the Setup tab and run the "query modem" command. Then input your details and hit "Connect".
If this still fails, have a look under the "Device" tab and see whether the modem has been assigned to /dev/modem or another /dev.
Kppp always seemed to set my modem to /dev/modem but then couldn't use it unless I specified it as /dev/tty0
Hope that helps.

I just tried to configure with kppp - I set my modem as /dev/ttyS0 and tried adding an area code to my carriers number but that didn't work. When I tried to connect a short while after 'logging onto the network...' appeared I got a 'Time expired while waiting for the ppp interface to come up.'

Details-
Jun20 18:59:30 localhost pppd[5610): pppd 2.4.2 started by anna, uid501
Jun20 19:00:00 localhost pppd[5610): Terminating on signal 5
Jun20 19:00:00 localhost pppd[5610): Exit