Broadband dongle

[Perdita]

On my holiday in Spain last week I bought a Vodafone dongle to use on my laptop. OH did that over Easter and had no problems at all. I used mine without problems from Monday to Saturday, the deal was for 7 days. On Saturday afternoon, while using the internet all my programms crashed and I was not able to get a connection back at all. I got the error message that another user has the same IP address for the laptop already (that is what I remember). I expect the same problem when I go back in the summer and renew the dongle time. Can anyone please explain what might have happened after nearly a week of problem free use, the last time I logged on, a couple of minutes before it crashed, I got the message that I had used 80% of the broadband, no way would I have used it all in the 10 minutes I used it before the crash. OH again had no problem with his laptop. Thanks anyone who can advise me. :)

[alan45]

I assume this was a Spanish Vodafone sim you were using.

[Perdita]

yes, it was

[Dazzle]

Maybe you should contact the company you bought it from, or Vodafone. Is there a helpline you can call?

[alan45]

I know this might sound stupid. But is it possible that you didnt log out after you finished using it. If you had been connected to any site which downloads a load of graphics then this might explain how you used 80% of your allowance. I dont understand the ip address mnessage though

[Perdita]

I always logged out after using it, but I did spend a lot of time online as I wanted to use up the credit I bought for that week. 80% on Saturday afternoon seems reasonable to me. The Vodafone message always said that there was a connection to the dongle but it would not connect to the internet. One help line said I was to uninstall the dongle and re-install it but that was not possible to do either, it kept saying that it was in use. The whole thing is just confusing. Yet OH had no problems the first time round and now when he topped up the credit for a week. His laptop is Windows XP, mine is a Vista, that is the only difference. :searchme:

[Perdita]

Maybe you should contact the company you bought it from, or Vodafone. Is there a helpline you can call?

I bought the dongle in a Spanish Vodafone shop, one of the ladies there speaks very good English but they are sales people, not sure they could help with this. Maybe I need to take the laptop to an internet place over there. Helplines will be Spanish speaking and I don't speak it enough for this.

[Dazzle]

If all else fails, I would take the laptop and dongle to the Spanish Vodafone shop next time you're over there. Even if the sales people don't know what the problem is, they may be able to access a helpline, or even replace the dongle.

[Perdita]

That is what I intend to do because I can't see the topped-up dongle working. Just wish why it stopped all of a sudden :(