:( okay, i’ve narrowed this down to a duplicate PPP adapter being created/activated after using incredimail it seems.  here is the state of my ip connection upon bootup and then dialup connection:

after disconnect and reconnect the ip state then looks like this

with an extra ppp adapter with a blank ip addresses!  this prevents me from getting to the internet.  any ideas?  any ip gurus out there?  thanks. :(

it was the armor2net personal firewall. installing the latest version corrected that problem…created others, but what the hay, that’s software for ya.