Menu Guru Steve Morman is back between holiday breaks to diagnose your computer woes. Since then, the phone on my desk does not ring. I previously owned a Packard Bell computer and the phone worked fine. Wis. Sue, Back in the old days, when you leased your phones from the Phone Company and you weren't allowed to own them, things like this seldom happened. These days, when you may have a dozen appliances attached to your phone line, sometimes things get a little strange.
Telephones ring when they receive additional voltage.
This additional voltage is used to notify the phone of an incoming call. If too many telephones or telephone devices like faxes and modems are on a single circuit, the amount of voltage available may not be enough to ring all of them. I used to have an old phone, the kind that weighed several pounds. It required more electrical current than was available in my home. Only if I unplugged all the other phones in the house would the old antique ring.