What has happened to AC?

[JWadle]

I am using Access Connections 4.11a on my T43p and it simply does not work correctly or as well as earlier versions.

Two issues:

AC 4.11a does not start VPN connections. If a profile is defined including a VPN connection, it does not start the VPN. It does activate the "Start VPN" button in AC, but the button doesn't do anything.

AC4.11a does not reliably log and use Ethernet ports to determine wired profiles. It adds new Ethernet ports to the list but does not reliably (i.e. sometimes works, sometimes not) recognize or use them to choose a profile.

All of this worked correctly in v4.01 and earlier.

Has anyone else had these problems or know how to solve them?

[bill bolton]

AC 4.11a does not start VPN connections. If a profile is defined including a VPN connection, it does not start the VPN. It does activate the "Start VPN" button in AC, but the button doesn't do anything.

It works OK for me with a Nortel Contivity based VPN.

AC4.11a does not reliably log and use Ethernet ports to determine wired profiles. It adds new Ethernet ports to the list but does not reliably (i.e. sometimes works, sometimes not) recognize or use them to choose a profile.

The automatic profile selection based on port MAC addresses seems to work differently in 4.11a, but I haven't had any particular problems in it not recognising which of the numerous different corporate and client LAN locations I may connect at during a week.

Earlier versions of AC seemed to be much more explicit about what was happening in terms of associating new port MAC addressess with a particular LAN profile, and this on aspect of version 4 that I am still a bit uncomfortable with, though as I said it seems to work adequately well for my purposes.

Cheers,

Bill

[davidspalding]

... AC4.11a does not reliably log and use Ethernet ports to determine wired profiles. It adds new Ethernet ports to the list but does not reliably (i.e. sometimes works, sometimes not) recognize or use them to choose a profile....

I was about to post a rant to General software about just this problem. I've noticed that 4.1x will save MAC addresses, but only associate new ones with the last profile that has a saved one ... precisely opposite of the desired behavior! (Expected: either ask which profile to associate a MAC address with, or save it to the profile that I'm *trying* to connect to.)

In fact, I'm finding that when I bring my work laptop home, it adds the Linksys router's MAC address to my work profile. So I have to delete the MAC address from work to connect to my home profile (differences: default printer, default home page, etc.). Sometimes AC doesn't even recognize a MAC address through a Mini-Dock or Dock II - it just says "wired LAN connected." I have yet to see 4.1x add MAC addresses properly to two separate profiles. I just moves them all around to the latest profile used.

It's driving me mad. Maybe I should go back to 4.01. Short of that, I'm looking through the registry profiles for AC to see where it stores the MACs ... maybe it can be hand-coded.

[w0qj]

Where can we download AC v4.01 for my T42s (2373-K5H) ?

Lenovo/IBM's site now lists v4.11a (and "previous version" as v3.82)

[davidspalding]

FWIW. I had the same problem again, but after connecting at home, I exported the profile information thus:

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Lenovo\Access Connections\Locations\[profile name]\AncDataList]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Lenovo\Access Connections\Locations\[profile name]\AncDataList\Anc00]
"m_dwAncDataFlags"=dword:00000003
"m_szMacAddr"=hex:00,0c,41,ab,d0,27
"m_szGateWayIp"="192.168.1.10"

And after connecting at work and associating the work MAC address with the work profile (and AC moving the home MAC address to the work profile, duh), I simply re-merged the home profile info.

So I finally have MAC addresses associated with each profile.

http://www.chromejob.com/thinkpads/ac_saved_ports.jpg

[nikemen]

Where can we download AC v4.01 for my T42s (2373-K5H) ?

Lenovo/IBM's site now lists v4.11a (and "previous version" as v3.82)

all I can say, is don't go NEAR 4.11a. Simply killed my wireless drivers, took about 1.5 hours to fix and GET rid of.

[theovd]

It works OK for me with a Nortel Contivity based VPN.

Cheers,

Bill

Having trouble getting a Nortel VPN (v 4.65) connection with a T40.
Get error message "Can not find Remote Host". There is an AT&T VPN client installed, but not running.

Has anyone seen this before, and if so, what needs to be checked or turned off?

Thanks,
Theo

[Sammie]

AC4.11a does not reliably log and use Ethernet ports to determine wired profiles. It adds new Ethernet ports to the list but does not reliably (i.e. sometimes works, sometimes not) recognize or use them to choose a profile.

Sounds familiar. Since 4.x location switching is not working for me as well. Not only on my T60, but also on other (XP SP2) machines I support.

It especially does not work if the mac-addresses are very similar. When I switch to a location with a complete different brand of switch, the new location is detected. But when I switch between are two main offices - with the same first three address bits - the switch is not detected and the port is stored in the previous profile. When I manually switch, the port setting moves with the profile.

Unfortunately not all necessary wireless security options are available in 3.82. Otherwise I still would be using this version (which is still available for downloading ...).