A voicemail system can be a handy and important feature to have in your home. We all like to make sure we get our important messages. However, some types of voicemail systems can cause problems with connectivity to the Internet.

If your voicemail system plays a tone before the telephone dial tone to inform you of voicemail, then the modem will interpret that as a lack of a dial tone. The modem is listening for that constant telephone dial tone that you get just after the voicemail tone.

In order to bypass the voicemail tone, you can make the following change to your computer settings:

• Go into the Start Menu on your computer.
  
• Go into Settings.
  
• Go into Control Panel.
  
• Double click on Modems.
  
• Select your modem in the list.
  
• Click on Properties off to the right.
  
• Click on the Connection tab.
  
• You will see a check mark in "Wait for dial tone before dialing", uncheck that.
  

Once you make this change your modem should stop waiting for a dial tone, simply ignoring the initial voicemail notification tone and begin dialing into the Internet immediately.