When I go into the Network Configuration dialog box and click on active to dail up to my modem I get this error message:

Cannot active network device ppp0
Failed to activate ppp0 with error 7

Can anyone tell me what this means and how to fix it

Thanks.

Need some more info, such as what type modem (pci,external, pcmcia, usb) what distro you are using.

Its a internal PCI 56K V90 Modem. not usb.

Good possibility it's a winmodem. These modems generally don't work with linux without some form of drivers/ extra configuration.
go to

http://linmodems.org

They have drivers and information that should prove helpful.

I have drivers for it, they came on the CD with the modem.

Good. Look on the disk and see if any of them are Linux drivers. If so install per their instructions and you should be good to go.

I had already installed the drivers from the disk before I got the error message.

"I would try to talk to the modem directly through "minicom -s". You will
need to tell it which port you are on.

Once minicom is running try typing the following: "AT&F1E1&W". That
should set the mode to factory default and store it in it's first NVRAM
location. You should get an "OK" back. If you don't get an OK try to
type "AT" and see if you get an OK. You should also see the "TR" and
"RD" lights flash. If any of this does not happen there maybe a physical
problem.

If you get an OK then the problem is probably in your PPP setup".

The ports mentioned at the beginning are ttsY0 ,1,2 etc
I found this on an old email I saved when I was using RedHat Author unknown. Hope it helps.

Thanks, it was a big help.