Dialup Failure To Connect

Like many on this forum, for several months I experienced random connection failures and/or loss of connection while browsing. (This did not happen on the two betas but only after upgrading from Beta 2 to VHP). Tried all the obvious things but nothing helped. Finally did what I should have done in the first place....went to the MS Knowledge Base and found two articles that seemed to apply (KB 936213 and 936214). These articles concern IE optimizing, resetting, and troubleshooting compatibility problems, and consist of many involved methods and steps. I ran through all the methods and steps, and nothing seemed to change. However, when I rebooted, a popup appeared stating that "Windows has blocked some startup programs" and

inviting me to click to see list of blocked programs. The list shows 7 MS programs and Avast Antivirus.(If anyone is interested, I can give you the list of programs). All show classification of "Permitted" The results: My dialup connection has worked flawlessly with no connection failures or disconnects for over two weeks. An added bonus: The popup asking "Do you want to disconnect" when closing IE is back (it had disappeared on VHP installation). Don't know exactly what I did, since I did not choose to disable any startup programs when going through the KB steps. Only know that it worked and there seems to be no other problems.