Thinkpads Forum

I have an X24 with the original mini-PCI 802.11b wifi card.
I'm running XP SP2.

One problem I have, which seems to be associated with Access Connections (latest version), is getting the message
"Wireless radio is powered off" and the instruction to remove and replace it (not so easy for miniPCI).

I wasted hours trying to re-enable it. Eventually I uninstalled the card drivers, rebooted, reinstalled. That seemed to bring it back to life.

Is there an easier way to do this? What does "powered off" actually mean? A registry setting? It doesn't seem to be literal, as I discovered that other wifi applications, like NetStumbler could cheerfully use the "powered off" card to monitor nearby stations. XP's Zero Config can work too. But going back to Access Connections it still insisted it was "powered off". None of the settings I could find in Device Manager seemed to make any difference.

The X24 does not have a physical "wifi on/off" button as I understand some other models do. Perhaps that is a problem.

Hi, it sounds to me as if one possibility could be that you have not updated the other drivers/files that Access Connections depends on. Look at the requirements for Power Manager, Hotkey driver, and the actual driver for your wireless card, is it possible you have downloaded and installed the wrong driver? Could you have installed the Aironet 350 wireless LAN Client (PC card) adapter instead of the Aironet 350 Wireless mini-PCI Wireless LAN client adapter? And that's just a guess as to which card you might have?

DAH wrote:Hi, it sounds to me as if one possibility could be that you have not updated the other drivers?

I'm pretty sure I have all the right drivers.

I bought it a couple of months ago, it had a fairly virginal OS installed, and I got all the recommended latest drivers from Lenovo's site linked from the X24 downloads page.

In particular:
High Rate Wireless LAN Mini PCI driver

OK could you then Double-click IBM High Rate Wireless LAN Mini PCI Combo Card Configuration Utility icon in the system tray.

Click the About tab. It displays the version of the firmware. And post it here?

DAH wrote:OK could you then Double-click IBM High Rate Wireless LAN Mini PCI Combo Card Configuration Utility icon in the system tray.

Click the About tab. It displays the version of the firmware. And post it here?

Network Driver
v 2.00.09.010 Sept 23 2002

Config Utility
v 2.00.09 Sept 23 2002

NIC Firmware
v 1.07.02.00

~~~~~~~~~~~~
I think these are the latest versions.

Related thread.

ryengineer wrote:Related thread.

Well, basically that says uninstall everything and reinstall everything. I've already done that two or three times. Works until something "turns off" the wifi card, then AC can't see it anymore, and none of the "turn on" buttons in the driver have any effect.

Fn5 for wifi power is not supported by the X24. (As mentioned in the Hotkey readme.)

I'd really like to know what "powered off" REALLY means to AC. It obviously is reading some setting somewhere, not directly checking the state of the card, and if I can find how to reset that I'd be able to use AC. Otherwise I'll just have to ditch AC. You'd think they would best know how to support their own hardware, but apparently not.

I notice on the downloads page for the wireless driver the following:

Lenovo wrote:The firmware for high rate wireless LAN Mini PCI combo card must be version 1.03.03.00 or later to install this driver for Windows XP. See the section Determining which version is installed later in this document to find what firmware version is installed.

Do you have the latest firmware?

It is not clear to me that the latest version of Access Connections supports the wireless driver for your card. The latest wireless driver I see available for your card is version 2.0.9.2228, and I do not see that driver listed in the compatibility chart. You can try Access Connections version 3.82 from the 4.42 download page or you might try this 3.53 back level version.
IBM Access Connections (Back level version) for Windows 2000, XP (WARNING: See document for critical installation limitations) - ThinkPad General

Do you have this utility installed? http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... VSU-UPDATE

This will find the latest IBM/Lenovo updates for you.

I had the same issue with an R50 using Vista, wireless was on but the AC said "radio off". It did nothing when pressing the software switch. Works fine now that I have an updated Configuration Utility compatible with Vista. Worked perfectly in XP prior to the upgrade.