If you are a BellSouth DSL customer, have suddenly lost your Internet connection and have been presented with a "BellSouth Password Change Tool" page (when you haven't deliberately changed your password), you might need to remove the "@bellsouth.net" from your login ID. Read on...
My mother is an AT&T (formerly BellSouth) DSL customer in the Piedmont region of North Carolina. This morning (Thursday, September 6, 2007). she called me to report that she was seeing a strange message on her computer and that she couldn't pick up her (web-based) email.
The prompt was from her browser (Firefox 2 Mac) informing her that the certificate for the site "https://setup.bellsouth.net" could not be verified, and to be cautious. This appeared whenever she attempted to browse from either Firefox or Safari.
On the phone, I prompted her to continue past the certificate warning to the BellSouth page. This page is titled "BellSouth Password Change Tool." The page informed her that she was using an "unsupported browser or operating system" and that the page should be viewed with Internet Explorer on one of several Windows variants.
I walked her through checking her hardware setup: the DSL "modem," a broadband router and her computer itself. All seemed healthy. We experimentally restarted all the devices, but to no avail.
After two calls to AT&T Tech Support (in India), I was left pretty unsatisfied. I established that her account was in good standing on the first call (we'd recently had to resolve a payment method issue, so that was suspect), and the her status lights indicated proper operation. I made a second call to have them change to the password to something else, just in case the original password had been changed or corrupted without my knowledge. As expected, the Tech Support script began with suggesting that she "remove the router" - not really my first choice of operations to attempt over the phone (though I've talked my mom and mother-in-law through some amazing operations via phone call, including re-seating RAM and installing an AirPort card in an iMac/CRT!).
After having AT&T Tech Support change her password, I talked my mom through changing the AT&T password on her router (her router manages the PPPoE username/password submissions to the modem). This was not successful. We re-entered the password a couple of times. We re-entered the OLD password. No connection. Finally, with the new password stored but failing to connect, I had her change her login ID from username@bellsouth.net to simply username. SUCCESS! This original login ID (with @bellsouth.net) had been configured in her router for a year and a half since originally subscribing for service. We had not altered it until today.
I'm speculating that AT&T has decided to eliminate the "@bellsouth.net" part of usernames from the login IDs, but if that's true, then there will be a lot of people encountering this problem. If you're one of them, I hope you found this post. Let me know.
1 comment:
I'm encountering a similar problem
I changed my password with the password change tool. After which I cannot get my router to broadcast to my other computers in the house. The only way I can connect to the internet is using my "dial in" connection on the one computer that is connected to the router by wire.
on all other 3 computers i have now no connection.
I have already accessed the router, changed my password in it and tried the user name with both @bellsouth.net and without it.
still no connection.
I contacted att tech support twice, no help there.
A Curious thing though, when i installed the router about a year ago I did not configured in any user name or password into it, i just plugged it in into the wall (we have bellsouth/att fiber service)- then plugged my computer to the router, my other computers just picked up the signal all i had to do is put in the security passphrase for the network and voila! it worked...
sooo.. am thinking maybe i need to re-set the router.. take off the att password and all.. i dont know.
its Puzzling!
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