Can't find the modem - sometimes

Hi,
I have recently upgraded from my 2 year old Simply MEPIS to the newer 6.0.1 Simply Mepis that is based on Ubuntu.

If I boot from the old hard drive which still has the old Mepis, the modem works properly every time.
If I boot from the new Mepis 6.0.1 drive, about half the time, I get "Can't find the modem".
when it fails, one or two or three reboots will fix the problem.
When it does find the modem once, I can then use the modem 50 or 100 times if I need to with no failure.

Based on this, I am guessing that there is something at boot up that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.

Does anyone know if there is a place to give the modem more time to respond to the system at start up? or some way to help the system find it after boot up?

I'm in a third world country where the electricity system doesn't allow me to leave the computer on when I'm not using it.

The modem is an internal SmartLink Soft Modem, which may be a winmodem (I don't know), but it is the only one that I have been able to use at all with MEPIS.

Thank you to anyone who has ideas,
don Jungk