Wireless redio won't turn on

[DavidR]

Hmm - traveled across the country with my trusty T60p. Arrived Sunday. Wireless worked great, signed up for a few days of WiFi at the Seattle Convention center. Worked yesterday, does not work today. Access Connections says the wireless radio is turned off, I click the Turn On button, nothing happens. In the Device Manager, all looks well. Disabled / enabled, no help. Rebooted. Shut down completely, no help. Drove back to the hotel to use the wired LAN. Any thoughts?

T60p / 2GHz / 2Gig / 7200RPM / DVD burner / Fingerprint / 15" Flexview / ATI 5250. Original BIOS: 2.09 (not upgraded yet)

[RonS]

There are two "switches" for the wireless:

1. The slider switch in the front, next to the IR port
2. Press Fn+F5 and press the button there.

[DavidR]

I moved the slider left. A pop-up told me that all wireless devices were off. So, I moved it back to the right and it said that each wireless device returned to the last known state. Fn-F5 has a Wireless Radio tab that has a place to press Power On for the wireless radio, which I do but it has no effect. If never goes on. If I click Find Wireless Network in the other tab it tells me that the wireless radio is off, do I want to turn it on. I click Yes but it never goes on. Curiously enough, the wireless indicator light on the bottom center of the cover is lit as if the wireless radio is on. But, it can not find any hotspots because it thinks that it is off and I can't turn it on.

Windows can not normally manage the wireless device but if I go into the properties of the network connection and click "use Windows to manage my wireless network settings" then "View available networks" a whole bunch show up. So, I guess the device is OK. I'd much rather use the Thinkpad software than Windows.

[fotel]

Same here, does the your ThinkVantage "Wireless Connection Status" window display the correct MAC address for the adapter?

[gator]

Try disabling access connections and using the default windows app to connect to wireless APs.

[DavidR]

The windows app works, I just don't like it. The TP app sets default printers, etc. I'd like to get the TP app back without all the uninstall / reinstall I see in other threads, mostly because I'm afraid I'll screw up more by doing that!

[Scratch]

The uninstall/reinstall isn't really that much of a hassle, but it is important to do things in the proper sequence and restart prior to reinstalling the latest version of AC appropriate to your machine.

Does the Device Manager show that the hardware is properly installed to start? Have you tried just doing a card driver update to see if this can restore the card's controls? I'm not sure if any PM settings can override the Fn+F5 control of the cards power state, but it might be worth a quick look.

I also like/value the functionality of AC and was willing to go to the trouble of getting its functionality back online.

I worked on this problem for a co-worker on a T42 with an Intel wireless card and got it back with an Intel/IBM driver update and a reinstall of AC. Good luck.