LinuxQuestions.org - Mandrake 10 dial-up proble

I am in the process of migrating from Win XP to Linux(finally). I chose Mandrake 10 as it is supposed to be more user friendly, but I've run up to several problems.
Specifically, i cannot properly use my dialup connection. I've managed to connect a couple of times, but not always. I use KPPP and most of the times, it just hangs at the "initializing modem" stage. However, it queries my modem just fine using the ATI commands. Initially, I used a ln -s command to create a symbolic link from /dev/ttyS0 to /dev/modem. I also tried to change permissions to this files from root:root to root:users (I added my user account to the group users).

Something else, that is very strange, is that after restarting my pc or reopening a session, i find out, sometimes, that either the link to /dev/ttyS0 has disappeared, or the permission to /dev/ttyS0 and /dev/modem have changed back to root:root (a script ran by the OS, maybe?)

Also, sometimes when i do connect to the net, i cannot download anything. This should have to do with resolv.conf and DNS's but my ISP uses automatic DNS configuration (i.e. there is no specific DNS server I should connect to).

I am an experienced Windows user with some command line experience of Linux (thru remote login to linux servers) and it is rather frustrating to not even be able to set up a dial-up connection to the net using the most user-friendly distro of linux.

If someone can help me with this problem, it'd be greatly appreciated.

thanks...