T60 2007-4AU - Modem Not Found error message

[Reidan]

At work I have approximately 40 Lenovo T60's, model 2007-4AU. I am having an issue with the modem in three of them.

A few of my field managers still have dialup at home. (They live out in the country where they do not have access to DSL or Cable Modem) When trying to use the modem from the T60 to dial up they are getting a modem cannot be found error message.

The first one got the error message within the first week of receiving the new T60. I had the T60 shipped to me. I did a test dialup and it worked fine. Since the unit was so new I decided to go ahead and reload the hard drive with fresh image. Since then this user has not had any further problems. Or at least they have not reported any problems.

Second user with the error happened about 2 months later. She shipped me the laptop and I tested it. This one also worked fine when I tested it. But, going on the previous experience, I also reimaged the hard drive. Shipped it back to the user and it worked fine for a few weeks. Then the problem repeated.

This time when she shipped it to me I got a different result when I went to checkout the problem. When I booted into Windows I got a New Hardware Found message. I canceled the Hardware Found Wizard and went to look at the Device Manager. For some reason the modem was gone from Device Manager.

I plugged the laptop into the network and logged in. Went to the Lenovo support site and downloaded the latest driver. Went thru the driver install process. Tested the modem and it worked. Kept the T60 on my workbench for several days. Rebooted it multiple times and even let it sit running for over 24 hours to see if it was a heat problem. Could not get the modem to fail again so I shipped it back.

This time it only lasted a few days before the error message returned.

I have also now got a call from a third user. Her T60 is intermittently giving her the same Modem Not Found error message. For her, sometimes it works and sometimes it does not. She has not shipped it to me yet to diagnose. I figured 3 people with the same problem, find out how to fix one and I can fix hers too.

Out of approximately 40 T60's, 3 are having trouble. 1 user who had the trouble once and it did not return. And 2 more users who are having the trouble intermittently, with one being worse than the other. Kind of hard to determine if this is a hardware failure or a software issue. For one reloading a fresh copy of the image seems to have fixed it. For another it did not.

Has anyone else experienced this kind of problem? Did you find a solution?

Have not contacted Lenovo Support yet. That is on my To Do list for today as well. But I figured I would start here first as I have better luck with support forums that I ever do calling a Support line.

Thanks,
Patrick

[GomJabbar]

Any chance they might be plugging it in to a digital phone system? (I believe that a PBX is such a system, and some hotels are reported to use such digital phone systems) Plugging into a digital phone system can fry an analog modem. ThinkPads are supposed to come with Digital Line Detect to help circumvent burning out the modem. The modem still will not work on a digital line though.

[Reidan]

Any chance they might be plugging it in to a digital phone system? (I believe that a PBX is such a system, and some hotels are reported to use such digital phone systems) Plugging into a digital phone system can fry an analog modem. ThinkPads are supposed to come with Digital Line Detect to help circumvent burning out the modem. The modem still will not work on a digital line though.

Thanks for the Reply,
As far as I can remember, they were at home each time they called me with the problem. I work for a retail chain and these are our store district managers who have these ThinkPads. When they are in the stores that they manage they can connect via the stores data connection to the corporate office. So they would only need dialup when at home. That is as long as they do not have a Broadband connection to use while at home.

The one user who has had the most trouble lives in Southern California. She describes her home "Living in the middle of an Orange Grove". Says she is surrounded on all sides by citrus farms. Guess there is not much need to have high speed data connections on a farm, so none of the telcos or cable companies have upgraded their networks for that area.

I understand what you mean by the Digital Lines and PBX systems. I have worked with some Avaya Digital Phone Systems in the past. If it was a modem damaged by a digital telephone line, I would think that it would be a dead modem all the time and not an intermittent failure like they have been experiencing.

Since it is intermittent, it is real hard to find the cause, and to fix it.

[claudeo]

This might help find a clue. I had an incident a few weeks ago, on the 2nd time I ever used the modem on my T60 in the boonies of California where only dialup is available, topping off at 24k. First connection, great, no problem. Second connection, I realized that someone else was just going to make a phone call, so I pulled the phone plug to stop the dialing out. Third connection did not happen--modem not found error. Upon investigation, found that the modem had disappeared from the hardware list. Not only that, the audio drivers were gone as well. No audio drivers, no modem. The modem uses the audio hardware apparently.
To make a long story short, a couple of hours later I was back in business. Note that I had no Internet connection without the modem, so I was up the creek without a paddle. I found the audio driver in a subdirectory of c:\drivers. Unfortunately it would not install, claiming it could not install because of some configuration error. After reading every human readable document in the driver directory, and a bit of tinkering, found how to clean things out to install the audio drivers. At the next reboot the modem got reinstalled automagically, and all was fine again.
So, in short, the cause of the problem is still mysterious, but seems to be related to something bad that occured to the audio driver when I interrupted the dialing sequence. The fix for a disappeared modem seems to be to reinstall the audio drivers, but there is a trick to doing that (I wish I had made notes of that; sorry, I don't remember). Because the installation and fix did not, as far as I remember, involve tinkering with the registry, I think you may be able to write up a short how to guide for the end users that they can keep on their computer as a text file; obviously an account with admin rights is required.

[Reidan]

It does sound like you had the exact same error my users are getting. I have looked on the Lenovo website and they list Audio and Modem drivers seperately. But I do think you are right that the systems are linked. I have not updated the audio drivers yet. Guess I will give that a shot next.

[steveg47]

Not sure if this will help; but both the modem and the audio require the High Definition Audio (hda) Class driver. So in this sense they are linked.

[Dale H. Cook]

I had the same modem/audio problem today, or at least a very similar one. While using the modem today the system locked up, and after rebooting neither the audio nor the modem would work.

I won't detail all the possible solutions I tried, but they included suggestions from this site, from the Lenovo site, and even a Windows system restore. Nothing worked - the audio and modem drivers would not reinstall.

I called service in Atlanta, and here is what they had me do:

1) Power down the system
2) Remove the AC adaptor, battery and ultrabay
3) Hold the power button down for 60 seconds
4) Reconnect the AC adaptor (but not the battery or ultrabay) and boot the system
5) Check the modem by dialing out (audio worked fine at Windows bootup), and it did work
6) Power down the system, reinstall the battery and ultrabay, and return to normal operation

[Reidan]

Alright Dale. It looks like you found the solution. I have had 2 more users have this trouble since I made my initial post. Both times removing the battery has solved the problem. I did not even do the boot up without battery installed the way you did. I just unplugged AC adapter. Pulled battery out for about 30 seconds. Plug battery and AC adapter back in and after that it worked.

I also know what caused the problem for one of my users, cause I did it to her!! We have a modem dialup server for some of our remote users to connect to our home office with. 2 weeks ago I needed to re-boot the Perle server that our modems are connected too. She was the only user dialed in. It showed that he connection was idle with no data being transmitted. So I booted her off. A few minutes later she tried to reconnect and she immediately started getting the modem not found error message. Had her do this trick and it fixed it. So, looks like the modem really does not like to be disconnected during a session!! And a normal restart does not fix it. You have to pull the battery.

[GomJabbar]

Amazing! I never would have thought that removing the battery for be the fix for modem not found.

[Dale H. Cook]

I don't know why that fix works, but there must be some element of the motherboard that gets hung and stays hung as long as the system has either AC or battery power. The step of pressing the power switch is obviously to insure that a capacitor is fully discharged, so the critical element must be connected with that.