Forcing status to be Online

From: John Wirt (someone_at_microsoft.com)
Date: 06/28/04 

Date: Sun, 27 Jun 2004 20:54:41 -0400

The are times when IE or DUN or something in Windows networking, concludes
that I want to work Offline and then I have a very difficult time manually
changing whatever has been set to Offline back to Online.

The problem may be that I am not using Outlook Express or Outlook as my
email program. Microsoft probably imposes a penalty on anyone who is stupid
enough to do this that the DUN connection can suddenly become invisible to
Internet Explorer, one's non-Microsoft email program, or any other
application that accesses the Internet.

I have looked in Windows Help, but there is NOTHING in it on changing the
status from Offline to "Online" (or turing off working "Offline"). Nothing.

Once Internet Explorer goes Offline, one cannot access any web pages on the
INternet, download news messages using Outlook Express (OE is a good news
reader), or access the INternet in anyway. Even if I manually dial the
Internet and connect with my ISP, Internet Explorer still thinks it has been
told to work OFFLine. If I type a new URL into the address line and select
Go, Internet Explorer proceeds to attempt to DIal my ISP itself using DUN.
Since the connection is already establish, IE has a hard time actuall
Dialing the connection, but it tries. Consequently, access to the Internet
is blocked.

The only way of getting back "Online" again, is to reboot and Dial up my
Internet connection. If I then enter a URL and Go to it, Internet Explorer
pops up the DUN window with the "Dial" button on it. If one selects Dial,
DUN is apparently to figure out that it is already online and it
restablishes Internet Explorer's access to the Internet connection.

I don't pretend to have this all figured out. How DUN actually works is a
huge unknown to me. I use it extensively -- I connect using MultiLink and it
works fine -- but I can never predict how it is going to work.

Question: Could someone please tell me how to MANALLY force Internet
Explorer, or whatever it is that goes "OFFLINE," to go back "online" so that
it becomes possible to reach the Internet again, without having to reboot
and go through all the shennanigans that are otherwise necessary to
reestablish access to the Internet?

I think Internet Explorer maybe involved because the genius idea seems to be
that some people may want to view web pages "offline" to save connect
dollars. THis seems a little archaic but the feature is still there.

My operating system is Windows 2000 Professional.

Thank you.

JOhn Wirt