im not too sure but what it could be but check your internet connection to see if your free dialup is set to default. i find it hard to explain things like this but if you have windows xp on your laptop try the following :
start--- connect to----show all connections and click on this. now you need to make sure that the dialup your laptop uses has a tick, if not then you need to make this your default connection........hope ive got that right, if not im sure someone will correct me !! lol