There are two phones in the house: One upstairs in our master bedroom. One in our dinning room with an answering machine. Lately when a call comes in, the former rings; not the latter. So we have to run upstairs to answer the phone call. I know the latter is working fine ... I bought it upstairs and tested it. But for some reason, we can't even get a tone from the handset. We have tried switching phone cable. Still, no go. How do we solve this? TiA

Kap

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SoCal for now.

A really obvious thing is to make sure that all the wires are appropriately connected to the phone terminal in the dining room as well as where the line splits off from.

Bring the phone from the bedroom into the dining room and check the dining room's connection with it.

Have you checked to see if the battery in the answering machine is working/charging the handset?

What is a phone?

MacMagus,
It's working fine.
I think it's the line in the dining room. But we are not sure what to do and where to begin.

Kap

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SoCal for now.

There is one box on the outside of the house that the telco puts in to feed the whole house. Since you have one phone that works, the line from the box is good so the telco isn't going to help you. Somewhere after that box, the line is split to go to all the phone jacks. What you need to do is find where that split is and where the line that goes to the dining room is.

First, I would pull the jack out of the wall in the dining room and replace it with a new one to rule that out. They don't cost much(couple bucks). You could always return it if it doesn't work.

If that doesn't work you should check the wiring at the split. Make sure all the connections are good and nothing is corroding or broken off.

If the connection is good there, the problem is somewhere in the middle of the wire. Inspect the wire, look for breaks, tears, burns, or anything like that. It will probably be easier to just replace that line. The easiest way is to cut the old line at the split, tie or tape the new wire to the old one and try and pull the old wire from the dining room.

I am not sure how experienced you are with wiring, you might have to call someone in to work on this if you aren't good with wires.

>>What is a phone?

I'm drunk, that was funny.

C(-)ris,
I am a novice at this. But I will follow your instruction to look at the condition of the wire. If needed I can ask a friend, a general contractor, for his opinion about hiring a handyman or an electrician.
I suspect where the problem is already ... I am to be certain first. Thanks!

Kap

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SoCal for now.