Wireless "failure"?

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aviography · #1 Post by **aviography** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 9:45 pm

Hi,

I have a T60 8744-5BU, it has an a/b/g/n wireless card from the factory, and it was working with a D-Link DIR-655 wireless router just fine, and even at the 300 mbp/sec rate.

A few months ago I though to update the router firmware, but did not keep the setting thinking it should be straightforward to get the router and the T60 sync'ed up again.

Well, I never got it to work. In fact I now don't see any wireless networks anywhere near by when I know there are several surrounding my house......, they can't ALL disappear!

Finally brought my T-60 and the router to work to have our chief IT guy look at it, he was not suppose to do any "personal" work but I need the router to be set up again for VPN using my work laptop which is an identical T60 as my own, so he agreed to set up both laptops at the same time.

With the admin/password etc. info that I had written down from setting up the router initially, he was able to set up the router and the work T60 in no time at all running at the 300 mbp/sec rate, in fact he didn't even have to touch the work T60 since I hadn't muck around with it at all. However he spent an hour trying to set up my personal T60 with no luck, even after updating the ThinkVantage to more recent version.

The wireless radio switch on the front is on, the ThinkVantage says the wireless radio is on, the status says "connected", yet when I do a "find wireless network", the diagram showing my computer and the different strength range shows up immediately and says "no network found".......

Is there anyway to do more test? Are there things I should check?

Is it possible that the wireless card is dead? it's pretty coincidental for this to happen when I updated the router firmware.

Can I swap the wireless card from the work T60 to my T60 to check things out? How difficult is it to get to the wireless card?

Thanks much in advance

#2 Post by **Harryc** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 9:59 pm

I'd try swapping cards. It is the fastest route to determine if it is a hardware problem or not. It's not difficult, you just have to remove the palm rest and keyboard to get at the card. Use the linked maintenance manual below. Just make sure to keep the antenna leads straight. The N card has 3 leads, the G card has 2 leads.

T60 Maintenance Manual

sktn77a · #3 Post by **sktn77a** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 10:43 am

Sounds like a network setting issue - the computer is seeing the wireless radio signals from the router but isn't able to access the network. Did you have any security settings on the router which might have been re-set to default when you upgraded the firmware? (and are they still present on your wireless card in the T60?)

Nothing changed on your T60 so it shouldn't be a harware problem there.

aviography · #4 Post by **aviography** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 12:14 pm

Thanks for the ideas, I will try swapping card later tonight when I get home.

As for security settings on router, I just confirmed with our IT guy that he did not have to make any changes on my work T-60 other than changing the frequency spacing from 20 KHz to automatice 20/40 KHz (or something to that effect) to pick up the 300 Mb/s, so this would mean that what got set up this time in the router *should* work with my personal T-60 since the same router setting worked with my work T-60 which remained unchanged.

Is my logic flawed?

Our IT guy suggestes that this is either a driver issue, or the wireless card has failed.

He also said it appears the software is is complaining the wireless radio is off even though it should have been on.......

aviography · #5 Post by **aviography** » Sat Jul 19, 2008 10:18 pm

Swapped the wireless cards, no difference, personal T-60 still does not work, work T-60 still works, so it's safe to say the wireless card was not the fault, which is logical since the problem with the personal T-60 only started when I installed the new firmware on the router.

Still not sure why the work laptop works without any problem.

I'm completely clueless and helpless when it comes to this, so any help, direction, or suggestion would be much appreciated.

Is there a piece of the software that I can un-install and then re-install?

Thanks again in advance.

sktn77a · #6 Post by **sktn77a** » Mon Jul 21, 2008 12:57 pm

Well, it could be an incompatible software setting on your T60. Short of restoring the entire system, I'm not sure where to tell you to start. Have you deleted AC and tried Windoze wireless management?

aviography · #7 Post by **aviography** » Mon Jul 21, 2008 10:21 pm

Took the advice of using Windoz to set the wireless network, and there is a slight move to the right direction.

I now can see the surrounding wireless networks in the neighbourhood, but still can't connect to my router or this one network that says "unsecured wireless netowor", it just says "limited or no connectivity".

I get the same "limited or no connectivity" error message when I select "connect" to the router name, the T60 sees the routers including mine, but it just can't seem to actually establish communication.

Something else I noticed is that under the connetion status, it says Address Type is "Invalid IP Address", and IP Address and Subnet Mask are both 0.0.0.0, and no Default Gateway was specified at all.

When I click on the "details" box, I get a Physical Address, 0.0.0.0 for both IP address and subnet mask, empty entry for default gateway, DNS server, and WINS server..........

What does this mean other than I am euchered?

Wireless "failure"?

Wireless "failure"?

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