PCI modems have a habit of disconnecting when system resources drop too low. It's almost a fail-safe that's built into them. Your internet connection is considered low priority, compared to other things your computer might be doing at the time. (CPU intensive tasks, like rendering.) A cheap PCI modem is more likely to give you this kind of behavior, than a good quality one might. Never liked ANY of them very much, myself. Before I went 'Broadband', I only used ISA modems. Almost everything they do, is via hardware built onto the board, and is simply more stable. PCI modems are a lot less expensive, because there's not much to them. Most of what they do, is via software loaded into your computer's memory, and they are resourse hogs. Maybe installing more memory will solve your problem.. (?)