The box with the black wire is in the front hall and the other is in the room next door. The one on the hall is mounted on the outside wall of the house and the other is mounted on the other side of a wall on the stairs. The one in the kitchen is in direct line with the hall.

 -----------------------------------------------

 |            ^        |           |   y                       |

 |----------   -------------     -----------------|

 |                   x     |        

^ denotes the box with the black wire
X is the other box and y is the box in the kitchen.
As i said before the other box is upstairs the wire goes up the stairs through the attic and into the bedroom.

three of the boxes are like this,

http://www.conorandlucy.co.uk/pictures/box.jpg
The fourth is a double socketed box.

I must say that this looks odd to me. If I am correct Box 1 has three wires attached, a black one, a thicker white one and a thinner white (cream 1). [There is also a thin black lead which goes though the wall but doesn't appear to be attached to the socket directly]. Box 2 has has two white cables. Now I'm assuming that the socket in the bedroom and kitchen only have one wire going to each. In that case you have one of two arrangements.

A)

BT------Box 1---------Box 2----------Ext 2

          |

          +------------Ext 1

i.e. Lines comes in from BT to Box 1, 1 wire runs to an extension (Kitchen or Bedroom) and second runs to Box 2, then second wire from Box 2 goes to other extension

or B)

BT------Box 2---------Box 1----------Ext 2

                        |

                        +------------Ext 1

i.e. Lines comes in from BT to Box 2 and other wire runs to an Box 1, from here two other wires run to the extensions in Kitchen and Bedroom.

There really isn't a way to tell which of these is for real. Except that the colour of the cables in the extensions should help. As the cable from box 1 to box 2 is cream (there aren't any black ones in box 2) then the black cable in box 1 must either go to one of the extension sockets or to BT. (Unless of course there is a joint in the cable somewhere and it changes colour at the joint!)

However this is all using old style cabling - there is no NTE5 socket, so you can't easily disconnect the extension sockets. This is the real point of connecting the modem to the master socket - if you have an NTE5 you can unplug the extension wiring and eliminate that from the equation. As you don't have an NTE5 you can't unplug it, so even if you plug into the master socket you still have the extension cabling attached and a fault in it could still cause the problem. You could remove the extension cables from the back of the master socket - but of course you are then tampering with BT's wiring and they don't like that.

The other thing of note is that both Box 1 and Box 2 have bell capacitors in them, i.e. they are both master style sockets. There should only be one master style socket in any wiring arrangement. The question is then - who added these extensions? It certainly doesn't seem to have been done correctly.

My suggestion is that really you should get all this mess sorted out - unfortunately if the extensions weren't done by BT (and my guess is that they weren't) then they may charge you for sorting it out.

The thin cream wire you mentioned is draped around the side of the house, i.e. its stuck wherever there is something that will hold it. And its worn away so that the inner wires are loose.

Have you tried following the route of the cable from the outside and see which socket it goes to first as that should be the master socket. Whilst there could easily be a number of things causing the problem internal wiring could easily be the cause especially with several sockets like this.

If you have bare wires this could be the problem. If they touch at any point then there will be a short. This could cause all sorts of problems with the link.

Dave

The black comes from box one to the box in the kitchen through the outside wall and back through the wall again.. From box 1 there is a cable that goes under the carpet to box 2 and then from box 2 to the box in the bedroom. The thin white wire goes from box 1 to the kitchen via the front of the house, around the side. This is the one that's badly worn.

Can you please find out for me what the earliest appointment would be as we need to get this sorted?

Unless I'm mistaken, anything after the first box is your responsibility. Be wise to check that before getting an engineer out, as they may well charge you.

The last owners left it in a right state and we need someone to sort this out. If i can get an engineer to disconnect all extensions and leave just the two boxes then it will be worth it to have a connection that's not dying every 30 seconds like it is. And if that is the case it might as well be a BT engineer.

There is one very important thing to remember though from this.

To get what your after from a BT Engineer, we will need to request an SFI (Special Fault Investigation) appointment.

If as a result of this, the problem is due to internal cabling which is not BTs direct responsibility, the most they will normally offer is to disconnect the cabling. Some may do some for of replacement, though this can often be length dependant.

The end result, will be the charge of