I have a non-working phone jack that I'm trying to troubleshoot. My house has a lot of strange wiring, and many of the phone lines come together in a messy junction box with random color coding. I suspect one of the wires isn't hooked up correctly, but I'm having trouble tracing the wires. I've tried using the LAN Tracker GET-4220T, but I find the results to be very erratic (sometimes all the wires seem to be energized, moving the probe slightly can lose all signal). Even when I am able to get tone from the tracker at the jack, I still can't get dial tone. I've tried swapping out the phone jack itself, as well as the phone.
Is there a good process for tracing phone lines and verifying that they are wired correctly? Is there a better tool than the LAN Tracker that wouldn't break the bank?