After XP SP3, No Wireless Encryption

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Tim M · #1 Post by **Tim M** » Mon Jul 21, 2008 2:53 am

I decided to be brave/stupid and install SP3 using the 330 MB manual download from the Microsoft site. Prior to doing this, I ensured that AC was gone and all ethernet and wireless (Intel 2200BG) drivers were up-to-date with respect to what Lenovo has available.

After the installation, ethernet worked but wireless did not. I removed the device and allowed the New Hardware Wizard to install it. I then updated drivers to the latest Lenovo-provided version. I can connect to my network (which uses WPA-PSK and TKIP with a 63-character passkey) initially, but if I connect to a different wireless network and then try to re-connect to my network, the connection cycles between "Acquiring Network Address" state and the red 'X' (System Tray) state. My router is a WRT54G v. 6 with the latest firmware. Indeed, everything is identical in terms of my setup except for the installation of SP3. Is there any way to fix this (generic Intel drivers?) or should I roll back to a pre-SP3 state once again.

Either way, SP3 is not worth the trouble in its severely buggy state.

Tim M · #2 Post by **Tim M** » Mon Jul 21, 2008 3:25 am

UPDATE: I noticed that I could switch between unsecured wireless networks without difficulty, so I disabled encryption on my network. The problem is gone. Although I still have MAC address filtering enabled, I really would like to be able to use encryption.

Any thoughts as to why SP3 seems to break security? I'm at the end of my rope here and will probably just roll back to SP2 if there isn't a solution.

EDIT: My issue is exactly the same as described for the T61 here, so it is not T42-specific and rather a direct result of SP3. Latest Lenovo-provided 2200BG drivers do not work; should I try the generic Intel drivers?

NovaKnowledgeNow · #3 Post by **NovaKnowledgeNow** » Mon Jul 21, 2008 9:59 am

I would certainly try reinstalling the drivers...

Tim M · #4 Post by **Tim M** » Mon Jul 21, 2008 10:13 am

As stated, I reinstalled the latest Lenovo-provided drivers that were working for me prior to the "upgrade." This morning, I was experiencing some additional wireless stability issues and so updated to the latest generic Intel-provided drivers. I have also set the Extensible Authentication Protocol to automatic as described here. When I am back from work, I will try encryption again and see if these changes have solved the problem. If not, it's likely back to SP2 for good.

Tim M · #5 Post by **Tim M** » Mon Jul 21, 2008 6:53 pm

Well, the fixes I attempted did not work. Installing the latest generic Intel drivers and setting the Extensible Authentication Protocol have not resolved the issue of being unable to acquire a network address.

Interestingly, if I plug into my router with an ethernet cable while the wireless repeatedly attempts to connect, I will get a successful WPA-PSK connection.

At any rate, this issue is clearly SP3 related as nothing else has changed. If there are no further things to try, I will going back to SP2 and dumping SP3 altogether.

Tim M · #6 Post by **Tim M** » Mon Jul 21, 2008 10:37 pm

Well, as there seems to be no known solution for this problem, I have reverted to SP3. There will have to be a major bugfix release of SP3 before I consider attempting installation again. This has just been a huge waste of time.

intellution · #7 Post by **intellution** » Tue Jul 22, 2008 7:52 pm

Hi just want to share my experience on the same matter. I too updated to SP3 and after that cannot be recognized in our domain. I tried the lenovo driver for my Intel 2200 but still to no avail. I rolled back to SP2 and updated the wireless using the Intel drivers (as advised by one of the members) and then updated to SP3. So far so good for me until today for the past month.

sjthinkpader · #8 Post by **sjthinkpader** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 3:37 am

Same thing happened to me after SP3 update. WPA-PSK/WPA2-PSK doesn't work anymore. When I set encryption to "Use Windows...", the Authentications button doesn't respond.

phubai · #9 Post by **phubai** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 1:41 pm

Same here...but I found that somehow the settings in my router had been changed from WPA2 to WEP somehow during the update. That was irritating but was also the cause of my problem. Once I reinstated WPA2 and restarted the router, I was good to go.
Now I know for a fact that I had the router set to WPA2 so it had to have been changed somehow by the update to SP3 process. Makes me love Mac/Linux even more!

virge · #10 Post by **virge** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 1:49 pm

After upgrading to SP3 my 2200bg cards would no longer acquire an IP address from the router. It would cycle through "acquiring/disconnecting" every few seconds. After an extensive search, I found someone on the internet who suggested reverting to the 9.0.4.17 version of the driver. That fixed the problem immediately. If I could remember where I saw this I would post the link so credit can go where it is due, but for the life of me I can't find it again.

Equipment:
Wireless Card: Intel 2200bg
Router: Netgear WTG624 v3
Security Setting: WPA-PSK [TKIP] + WPA2-PSK [AES]

Downgrading the driver worked for me, hopefully it'll work for someone else. Seems to be an SP3 issue, but I don't know enough about software to be sure. This problem arose on my T41 and T42P after the SP3 update. My A31 and X22 with the same card on SP2 haven't experienced any problems.

Tim M · #11 Post by **Tim M** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 1:54 pm

^^ Very interesting. I had the exact same issue, but tried upgrading instead of downgrading the drivers.

I'll keep this in mind if I ever find specific need to attempt an SP3 installation again. My preference would be for a bugfix for SP3 and/or proper support from Intel and Lenovo.

I know...not at all likely.

virge · #12 Post by **virge** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 2:02 pm

Tim M wrote:^^ Very interesting. I had the exact same issue, but tried upgrading instead of downgrading the drivers.

I'll keep this in mind if I ever find specific need to attempt an SP3 installation again. My preference would be for a bugfix for SP3 and/or proper support from Intel and Lenovo.

I know...not at all likely.

My first attempt to fix this problem was also by upgrading to the newest drivers, first from Lenovo and then from Intel. Neither of those options worked.

I'll keep my fingers crossed that an updated driver fix will be available soon. Downgrading to a much older driver isn't really the proper solution!

Tim M · #13 Post by **Tim M** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 3:27 pm

^ I agree. I also seem to recall that some of the older drivers (not sure if 9.0.4.17) would cause connections to be dropped without warning.

ryan1212 · #14 Post by **ryan1212** » Sat Jul 26, 2008 6:17 pm

my T40 with the cisco aironet 350 initially had issues with SP3. I solved them by running the updater utility from Cisco's website (although had to make an account on their page to access it).

It updated the firmware on the card, the driver and the software to a much newer version than what IBM\Lenovo has on their page or through their system update program.

NorrisCell · #15 Post by **NorrisCell** » Sat Jul 26, 2008 10:57 pm

Which wireless card does your machine have? I'm running SP3 with an Intel 802.11b only card and haven't had any issues with WPA on my home network.

proaudioguy · #16 Post by **proaudioguy** » Mon Sep 01, 2008 1:01 am

Looks like I have the 2915abg. Anyone know if SP3 or the intel drivers are fixed yet? I really would like the speed benefits of SP3 but every time I've installed it I have the connections issues. It's been a month or more so I figured I'd check.

Temetka · #17 Post by **Temetka** » Mon Sep 01, 2008 2:07 am

SP3 here on the stock T42 with the Intel 2200B card and no problems with WEP/WPA whatsoever.

Mactabilis · #18 Post by **Mactabilis** » Fri Sep 05, 2008 7:07 pm

Let's see what we all have in common:
- T42 2378-FVU w/retail version of Windows XP SP2 (not Lenovo's OEM version).
- Intel's 2200BG mini PCI wlan card (changed it later)
- Linksys WRT54GS router version 1.0 (Broadcom's chipset) with DD-WRT VINT STD v.24 SP1
- Using hardware drivers straight from the manufacturer, no thinkpad technology software installed, except for the trackpoint and on screen display software.

WAP(2) encryption works just fine on the system with Intel's (not Lenovo's) current drivers. I slipstreamed SP3 into my XP SP2 CD, installed it, installed the card's latest driver, detected the SSID, joined it, but never acquired an IP address. I afterwards switched to WEP encryption but the card still wouldn't establish a connection with the router, it would connect to other open networks though though . Later on I removed the encryption, enabled MAC filtering and connected to my router without a problem.

Other computers or laptops with windows xp pro sp3 would connect flawlessly to the router using WAP2 encryption on the router therefore I concluded that the source of the problem was either a bad driver, a windows component or service, or the card itself.

I tried reinstalling the card's driver, same problem. Started every single service in Windows, problem persisted. Patched the BIOS to allow other wireless cards, installed a card with an Atheros 5000 chipset and the problem persisted. Reverted my router's firmware to the original one, tried sveasoft's firmware, same problem.

I went back to DD-WRT's firmware and installed various linux distributions on the laptop and every single one of them connected to the router using every single kind of personal encryption using either athero's or or intel's card.

I went back to SP2 and both of the cards connected without a hitch, ever since I've been stuck with it. Since this is a used computer, I don't have any of the restore discs or the original partitions to test the original updated setup with SP3 that comes with the computer.

Thx for reading.

cspgsl · #19 Post by **cspgsl** » Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:40 am

I updated to SP3 and had the same issue with a TP T40 2373-PU7 with an Intel Pro Wireless 2100 3B Mini Adapter and a Trendnet Wireless G TWE-432BRP Router.

Security set to:
WPA-Auto
PSK / TKIP

Updated the router's firmware - No resolution
Updated the Intel driver to v.1.2.5.37 and all worked fine

Fingers crossed

virge · #20 Post by **virge** » Sat Sep 06, 2008 8:24 pm

Just updated to SP3 on another T42P with the Intel 2200BG card. Same problem again. That's 3 out of 3 machines so far that I've had the same problems with SP3 and the 2200BG. This is why I have a large stack of the 91P7301 ABG cards-- no problems at all with these.

kvik · #21 Post by **kvik** » Mon Sep 15, 2008 4:35 am

I'm having the same problem with 9 IBM ThinkPad T42 2373-K1G's.
All has the Intel Wireless 2200BG card, and after updating to SP3, they find the wireless networks using WPA/WPA2-PSK mixed mode as WPA2 instead of WPA as before, when they were running SP2 without the WPA2 compatibility update.

The wireless routers (we're talking 9 different users in my company, and their 9 wireless ADSL-connections) are locked from ISP, so it can either be WPA/WPA2-PSK mixed mode, or no encryption. (Great ISP, I know...)

Does anybody know of a solution, that doesn't require me to:
- Downgrade all 9 to SP2 (the users will eventually install SP3 themselves, and recreating the problem).
- Change the routers settings to no encryption (not gonna do that!

)
- Throw away the crappy 2200BG cards, and purchase and install some Atheros cards instead.

Just for the record, - I have tried 5 different 2200BG drivers, both Lenovos and Intels drivers.

Thanks in advance.

sktn77a · #22 Post by **sktn77a** » Tue Sep 16, 2008 2:36 pm

Well, you could get rid of encryption and use MAC address filtering. A bit clumsy but it doesn't sound like the National Security is at risk (?)

bevross · #23 Post by **bevross** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 8:01 am

I had this same problem with the 2200BG & XP SP3 on my T42. I ordered a replacement card (the one with the Atheros chipset). Meanwhile, while waiting for the replacement card I tried uninstalling a few of the Thinkpad's useless/poorly working programs (especially the software updates program). Lo & behold, the wireless started connecting again! Unfortunately I don't remember which 2 other programs I uninstalled so I can't list them here but someone might want to pursue this if they find this problem. Meanwhile I replaced the wireless card.

I also found something about an incompatibility between the Intel wireless & Linksys routers (the ones I had the problem with): http://downloadmirror.intel.com/16617/E ... htm#issues

ricks03 · #24 Post by **ricks03** » Wed Mar 20, 2019 1:04 am

Yes, this is a problem from over a decade ago. But it's still an issue, and I found this post.

I believe the problem with the upgrade to XPSP3 updated the WIRED driver, which causes a problem/conflict with wireless. Other sources suggest the Wired driver is updated to version 8.x, and downgrading to 7.x will resolve the issue.

You can validate this by disabling the Wired NIC in Network Manager and then ALSO disabling the Wired NIC in Device Manager. After rebooting, your wireless will work.

That solution, cobbled together from several sources, fixed it for me.

After XP SP3, No Wireless Encryption

After XP SP3, No Wireless Encryption

SP3 and wireless woes

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Re: After XP SP3, No Wireless Encryption

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