Question: My modem will not dial when there is a stutter dial tone on my home line which indicates that I have voice mail waiting.

Answer: The following tech note is from Microsoft's web site:

Symptoms: When you try to dial out, you may experience several repeated tones and then receive one of the following error messages: No dial tone, Error 680, Hardware failure. This can happen if you are using any type of service provided by your phone company that utilizes distinctive dial tones.

Resolution:

Call the answering service and remove any messages in storage.

Add multiple commas before the number to be dialed.

1. Click Start | Settings | Control Panel.

2. Double-click Modems | Dialing Properties button.

3. In the "To access an outside line, first dial" box, add commas. For example, to enter a number to access an outside line, it would appear as: ",,,,9" without quotation marks.

Uncheck "Wait for dial tone before dialing".

1. Click Start | Settings | Control Panel.

2. Double-click Modems, click your modem, and then click Properties.

3. Click the Connection tab, and then uncheck "Wait for dial tone before dialing" box

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