tech bleg

My wife's computer is an HP notebook. My computer is an HP notebook. Both run Conexant AC Link 56k modems, and the hardware and software on both is otherwise identical, except for her processor (it's a little faster) and her RAM (there's a little more).

Yes, we're still using dialup at home. It's cheap.

I've installed all the software updates on mine, and it runs normally. On my wife's, though, any effort to update the Conexant driver leads to slow pageloads and "page not found" errors.

I've tried about every Windows-based solution out there, with no luck. Anyone out there with a clue to the real problem?

Update: A little more info that might connect to the weirdness, or might not. My wife's computer's modem used to be set to COM 4, so, in an attempt to fix connection problems, I set it to COM 1. It's been there ever since. (My HP is set to COM 1 automatically.)