X40 Access Connections problem

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Weez · #1 Post by **Weez** » Thu Jan 05, 2006 5:23 pm

Im having a problem that i cannot figure out for the life of me. when i first got my system about a year ago Access Connections worked for about the first 6 months. Then i noticed a red circle with a line thru it in the taskbar icon. When i open AC it shows the profile is disconnected and the radio is off but it really isnt. If i try and connect it just fails saying unable to power on radio. The wireless works fine but for some reason AC doesnt see the radio as being on. I dont have windows handling the wireless settings. I recently had to restore my system to its original state and AC was working again, then immediately after running the software updates via Thinkvantage AC went right back to the errors. The system works fine but i would love to get AC working again as i used several different profiles when away on business or in the different offices. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks DJM

DavidNZ · #2 Post by **DavidNZ** » Fri Jan 06, 2006 1:15 pm

Weez - assuming this is an X4x, correct?

What version of AC are you running? And, assuming you're using the most up-to-date wireless drivers (and the correct ones)?

If it is saying unable to power on radio, I'm wondering if it's not a problem in with the PCI chip.

Maybe there is other software conficting, although can't think for the life of me what that might be.

About the only other thing I can suggest is restore again to when it is working and then slowly add things via the Software Installer. Otherwise, I'm stumped.

For what it's worth, my X40 is running the latest drivers and AC (4.01) and I don't have a problem.

Sorry can't be of more help.

Weez · #3 Post by **Weez** » Sat Jan 07, 2006 1:06 am

yes its on my X40 and im running AC 4.01 w/9.0.2.31 drivers. Yea its a very frustrating issue that ive been trying to fix for quite awhile now. Im almost sure its conflicting with something else, I just need to find out what it is. I may try and restoring the system If i do ill let you know what i find out. Thanks for the reply.

amgdoc · #4 Post by **amgdoc** » Sat Jan 07, 2006 2:15 pm

i had a problem like this before. i tried everything, even uninstalling any program that said ibm on it and using a registry cleaner too leave no trace. i got so angry at the x40 i ended up formatting and reinstalling everything. problem solved.

if you are going to go this route, remember to backup everything you need. also as soon as you get online after reinstalling, download the latest drivers and software using the thinkpad 'software installer'

Weez · #5 Post by **Weez** » Sun Jan 08, 2006 12:47 am

ive reformatted a few times and it always works again upon a fresh install, the problem is it always breaks during one of the "upgrades" I just need to figure out which one is causing it to break.

DavidNZ · #6 Post by **DavidNZ** » Sun Jan 08, 2006 1:42 am

Maybe a silly question: are you sure you have the Intel Pro Wireless PCI card in your X40 and not the IBM one? Mind you, if you're using Software installer, it should pick the right one for you, but I don't always obey it on some things (e.g., R&R, Away Manager, etc.)

DavidNZ · #7 Post by **DavidNZ** » Sun Jan 08, 2006 1:43 am

yeah, ignore my last post. I doubt SI would give you the wrong driver.

just can't for the life of me think of which Thinkvantage app would cause this.

gerdh · #8 Post by **gerdh** » Mon Jan 09, 2006 9:52 am

I would like to ask you to check following:

- go to services in the "Manage My Computer" dialog. (right mouseclick on My Computer)

- check whether the "Wireless Zero Configuration Service" is running and starting "automatically". Set to "Manual" start and stop the service.

Background: mismatches of status information (wireless on / off, connected, disconnected") and dropping connections mainly results from interfering of AC with this service. After disabling this service, AC works smoothly.

IBM forgott to provide means to switch off this service, which appears again after Windows Updates in the image.

After this basic test, other root causes might apply.

Gerd

kneebuster · #9 Post by **kneebuster** » Mon Jan 09, 2006 5:15 pm

Do you have Spy Sweeper v4.5 installed? If so, this is probably the source of your problems. My Access Connections worked fine until I installed Spy Sweeper. Fortunately System Restore fixed the problem. I've got a trouble ticket into Webroot to try and find a solution.

dorin · #10 Post by **dorin** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 6:40 am

hi, i solved it by uninstalling all the drivers for networking and installed them all manually. the problem was somewhere with sapi dirver when i tried to install the latest AC!

hope will help!

Weez · #11 Post by **Weez** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 11:13 pm

gerdh wrote:I would like to ask you to check following:

- go to services in the "Manage My Computer" dialog. (right mouseclick on My Computer)

- check whether the "Wireless Zero Configuration Service" is running and starting "automatically". Set to "Manual" start and stop the service.

Background: mismatches of status information (wireless on / off, connected, disconnected") and dropping connections mainly results from interfering of AC with this service. After disabling this service, AC works smoothly.

IBM forgott to provide means to switch off this service, which appears again after Windows Updates in the image.

After this basic test, other root causes might apply.

Gerd

Gerd,

After a few weeks of testing this, it definitely seems to have helped. It's has only happened to me once in the last 3 weeks and i've probably rebooted 20x or more. I noticed the one time it did happen i tried to shut down the computer and a a program had stopped responding and i had to kill the task for the computer to shut down. The task was either LPWindowManager or LPManagerWindow i forget which it was called. I assume this is part of the Thinkvantage Productivity Center as it has a file called LPMGR.EXE although i'm not 100% sure. In any event, thanks for the suggestion, I think it really helped.

DJM

Weez · #12 Post by **Weez** » Tue Apr 04, 2006 9:21 am

Ok well i FINALLY found out the solution to the problem I was having. Im not sure what software updates caused this problem but I do know several different updates cause it to occur. Sometimes it was a windows security update, sometimes it was a software update from the ibm update service. Anyway onto the solution..................................

Im not sure what took me so long to diagnose this problem because looking back on it, it should have been the first thing I should have tried. I tried to do a bios update and pfft again AC refused to load and the machine was chewing cpu cycles between LOGMON.EXE and LPMGR.EXE. So i went into the services panel and tried to start the 2 AC services manually which immediately return an error "Error 193: 0xc1" unable to start service. So I did some searching for the error and came up with a few different things to try. The one that helped was to go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\<ServiceName> in regedit and double click on ImagePath on the right hand pane. Put quotes around the path. ie: make C:\Program Files\ThinkPad\ConnectUtilities\AcPrfMgrSvc.exe look like "C:\Program Files\ThinkPad\ConnectUtilities\AcPrfMgrSvc.exe" then go to C:\ and remove any program files. ie: program, program.bak, program1, program1.bak etc etc etc. As soon as I did that. I rebooted and the services that wouldnt start before immediately started on the reboot. Im not sure what caused the conflict but this worked as a solution. Before finding the solution I had re-imaged at least 20x's. Thanks for the help and suggestions.

DJM

DavidNZ · #13 Post by **DavidNZ** » Tue Apr 04, 2006 12:46 pm

Wow - pretty impressive that you were able to figure that out. Good job, and thanks for posting the solution - could help someone in the future.

ump · #14 Post by **ump** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 10:08 am

I had the same problem. Changing the "Wireless Zero Configuration Service" seems to be working for me. I'll keep in mind the more radical solution, in case I need it. Thanks to you both.

X40 Access Connections problem

X40 Access Connections problem

had same problem once

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"Wireless Zero Configuration Service"

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