I've been having this strange problem with my 333 Grape iMac running 9.0.

My friend and I were messing around with my internet preferences so that we could play an ethernet game of Myth II. At the end of our game session, I set the TCP/IP and AppleTalk preferences back to their original settings. (Or so I thought.)

Ever since that time, my iMac has dialed out upon startup to make an internet connection to my ISP. I find this annoying.

I've done everything I can to stop this behavior. Nothing is in my Startup items folder, and the connection is made even before the Finder starts up. I've pored over the settings in Remote Access and TCP/IP to find something to disable it. I've even trashed all my preferences and rebuilt my connection script from scratch, to no avail.

It has been suggested to me to deselect the "Connect Automatically When Launching TCP/IP Applications" option in the TCP/IP control panel. This works, but it also has the undesirable side effect of making the iMac not dial out when I start an internet application, like Emailer or Navigator. I don't want to have to manually connect every time I want to check something out on the internet. I just want my iMac to work the way it always did!

Thanks for any help.

[drewman]

In the 'Advanced' portion of the TCP/IP panel there is an option to always load TCP/IP or load it on demand.

With dial-up if you have it turned off so that it is always loaded, then when you boot and TCP/IP loads it will check for the network and guess what? Yes, it will trigger a dial-out.

So, go back to that panel and click on Load when needed.

drewman

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, that doesn't solve the problem, because I already had "Load only When Needed" selected.

[gene]

Is the setting to use "A Network Time Server" to syncronize time checked in the Date/Time control panel?

[mkbhatia]

I believe if you have use 'TCP/IP for file sharing' and have file sharing enabled on start-up (in the control panel) then your Mac will attempt to connect to the Internet on start-up. This is direct result of the option to "connect automatically" under Remote Access (options button, 'protocol'tab).

I downloaded a shareware program called TCPManager and loaded it to try it out. It installs 2 system extensions. One of them causes the Mac to dial out before the Finder starts - every time the Mac is started up. It leaves nothing in the startup folder. Possibly you did the same? It is called OT TCPM Extension, I believe.