Thinkpads Forum

Hi all, first time here, so please be gentle.

I purchased my T60 in January, and since that time I have seen a recurring issue: my wireless tends to intermittently drop out for no apparent reason, especially when the computer is dormant (NOT sleeping or hibernating, as I have disabled those features). Within the Device Manager and under the Wireless Network Card section, I have disabled the computer's ability to turn off the wireless card to save power. Again, most of my drop-outs occur when the monitor is shut or when the screen has gone black for a long time, but it is not uncommon for the wireless to drop out during regular use.

I know that the wireless network itself is not to blame, because other users of the same network have had uninterrupted access. Similarly, this has occured with dozens of different wireless networks with varied security settings in three different countries, so I don't think it's any one incompatibility that's doing it.

I have disabled Access Connections, because I don't trust it as much as I do the standard Windows network controller. Oftentimes, when I lose the network, I can recover it by simply pressing Fn+F5 and reselecting the network in the window that appears (hopefully you guys are familiar with that menu). However, it is not uncommon that that approach fails too, and the only way to recover is to reboot the computer. Switching the wireless radio off and on with the manual switch has never worked. Additionally, when these failures occur, the wireless card frequently will not pick up any local wireless network, which is very telling because I live in an apartment complex, and at any (normal) time I can see more than 20 networks.

Sorry for the scattered info, but all I have is a list of observations. I feel like the wireless card is being disabled at random. If someone knows of a setting or otherwise that I could check, please let me know. I really hope this is not a hardware/wireless card problem, because I'm not sure how long I can afford to part with my computer.

All advice is welcome. This is a huge problem for me, and anything that can be done to resolve it would be amazing.

Thanks.

EDIT: Forgot to mention I'm using the Intel 4965AGN card with Vista Business.

I also got issue with the Lenovo driver disconnect from network all the time. I grab the driver from Intel and it works fine.

Sounds like a power problem. There have been several threads regarding this problem which you can refer to. Go to advance power settings and disable any power saving modes for your wireless adapter.

I would also recommend updating the router firmware, obviously for those systems that you have control over. It may not solve all your problems but a router with outdated firmware might work fine with an XP system, but a Vista system is likely to have problems that are usually fixed with the latest router firmware.

I had exactly the same problem with all the same symptoms about 1 year ago. There are only two differences - I have Intel 3945ABG wireless card and I'm using XP SP 2. After some research on this forum I found a thread where this problem was discussed. And somebody posted a link to a very helpful document that helped me to resolve the problem with my T60. Unfortunately I cannot find this thread. But I have the document. Here is the link:
http://rapidshare.com/files/115225054/T ... i.pdf.html.
May be it will help you.