How to enable and disable call waiting on computer

If your computer uses a modem connected to a telephone landline, "call waiting" notifications can disrupt your data connection. To enable or disable call waiting on your computer, follow these steps.

Enabling call waiting

Before attempting to enable call waiting, you must ensure that the phone company has enabled this extra feature on your phone line. If this feature is enabled and the phone line doesn't have this feature, the modem will not work. Below are steps for Windows 95 and 98 users to ensure that call waiting is not enabled on the computer.

1. Click Start, Settings, and then Control Panel.
2. Double-click Modems within Control Panel.
3. Click the Dialing properties button.
4. Verify that the box for "Disable call waiting" is not checked.

Disabling call waiting

The steps to disable call waiting are provided below. It is important to remember that if you have one phone line and you disable call waiting, no one can reach you.

MS-DOS and Windows 3.x users can enable call waiting by following the steps below.

1. When dialing a BBS (Bulletin Board System) or ISP (Internet Service Provider), place one of the below prefix codes in front of the phone number. Usually, the prefix is *70 but may vary in your area.
   
   The available numbers are:
   
   *70
   #70
   1170
   
   To separate this number and the phone number, a comma is usually required. Below is an example of what this may look like:
   
   *70,18011231234

Windows 95 and 98 users can disable call waiting by following the steps below.

1. Open the Control Panel.
2. Double-click Modems within Control Panel.
3. Click the Dialing properties button.
4. Check the box to Disable call waiting.
5. Select the appropriate code to disable call waiting; usually *70 in the United States.