X31 Wireless problem

[stephen74]

I work for a medium sized telco and do desktop support. I've got an X31 running Windows 2000 that I'm having problems getting the wireless to work on. Windows sees the wireless adapter and allows me to turn the wireless on and off through the driver properties window, but when I try to access the card through ThinkVantage Access Connections, that software doesn't see the card correctly. And interestingly, on one of the property screens in the ThinkVantage software, the MAC address of the wireless card is showing incorrectly in comparison to what Windows shows. Has anybody else run into this behaviour before, and if so, how did you fix it? I've installed and reinstalled every version of the wireless driver that I can get ahold of, and I've been through several revisions of Access Connections.

And to clear up any thoughts of hardware issues, I downloaded PC Doctor from the Lenovo site and confirmed that there are no issues with the hardware.

Help?

[makai]

Every problem I've ever had with a wireless adapter and Access Connections was due to the fact that the wireless driver must be installed first before AC. I don't know if you are aware of this.

If not, uninstall all wireless drivers, and any AC (delete profiles with the uninstall), then reboot the machine. Then install the wireless driver that's recommended for the version of AC you're going to install. The AC download page will tell you which version wireless driver is needed.

The other thing is that X31s seem to be picky about the type of card that gets installed (bios lock). If it's an Intel card, then there'll probably be no problem, but if its an IBM card, it may not work without perhaps a bios hack... YMMV.

What model card is it?

[Kyocera]

stephen, have you tried removing access connections and letting window manage the wireless networks. I have never used AC and am very happy with the result.

[stephen74]

It's possible that I haven't tried that, but I will certain check that avenue out again even if I have just to verify. Once a person gets so far down the primrose path of troubleshooting, it all sort of blurs together if you haven't meticulously written down the results of testing. And unfortunately, I haven't done that. I could certainly probably stand to be a little more systematic in that regard.

One thing to consider is that this is Windows 2000, which doesn't have nearly the same good configuration software for wireless networks that is inherent in Windows XP. And the driver is basic in terms of configuration options, all of which have been correctly inputted.

[makai]

Well, good luck with your endeavors! If you can't get it to work, you might consider running XP on it. There are several people that can probably get you the XP recovery dics for your X31. Just post a WTB in the MarketPlace forum and you'll probably get it for the cost of shipping.

[stephen74]

I actually tried running XP on it and had problems with the combination of our AD domain and the build. The machine kept falling off of the domain and losing permissions, but that may be an administration problem upstream. I don't wanna go into that aspect of things.

I've removed Access Connections and the driver and am currently rebooting the machine. Upon reboot, we discover that wireless LED is no longer indicating. After logging in and checking device manager, the wireless network adapter is redetected, while the Deterministic Network Enhancer that corresponds to the Wireless Adapter shows as an unknown device.

At this point, while the wireless is again indicating that the internal antenna is active, the link for Local Area Connection 2 shows as disconnected, and gives Disable, Create Shortcut, Rename and Properties as context menus. When examining Properties and checking the properties of the card, the driver properties allow the device to be turned on and off via checkbox, and allows for limited wireless management via the Wireless Network tab.

After entering the network information for our wireless network here at work, the wireless adapter still shows media disconnected in the system tray.

This is the point where I would normally install Access Connections because it's the recommended wireless management software for Windows 2000. This is what I need to get to work and can't. Whatever is causing the adapter to show as disconnected and not see the wireless network (even though the proper wireless credentials are entered) is also causing Access Connections to not see the wireless adapter as a valid connection.

I hope that helps explain things better.

[stephen74]

I thought I would do a little more searching on the Lenovo site, and this appears to be the most up to date version of that driver that I've found so far (http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... 59438.html), which is version 1.2.4.41 and is supposedly compatible with Access Connections 4.12). I installed the driver pack that resulted from this install, rebooted and found that the computer had detected the Deterministic Network Enhancer)

The network adapter still shows disconnected, however.

[stephen74]

Now that I look in the control panel, I do see a Intel PROSet applet, but when I check the applet itself it states that there is no adapter found. I'm removing and reinstalling the wireless adapter right now to see if I can remedy that point....And of course that didn't work.

[stephen74]

Okay, so over the course of the day I've tried a couple of things that leave me scratching my head. First off, I tried reloading Windows 2000 from a fresh install because I wanted to eliminate the possibility of there being a problem with the prebuilt image. Regrettably, a fresh install yielded the same results. I also reset all bios options to default in the event that a BIOS setting issue was the problem. That didn't seem to do the trick either.

At this point I don't really know what else to do. I've reinstalled the OS, I've reinstalled drivers, I've reinstalled software. I'm not sure what else I CAN do at this point.

[stephen74]

Okay, so I've been through two different X31s now, and both of them are exhibiting the same issue. I've run diags on both machines, and they come up fine in all regards. Two completely fresh builds of Windows 2000, and both are showing the same symptoms. Wireless shows as on but disconnected.

[Terrahawk]

In my experience with wireless and Windows 2000, it will always show up as "cable disconnected" until you have the SSID and security options set correctly. I have found that it will only show up as connected once it has successfully logged into an access point or other computer if you are using an ad-hoc network.

[stephen74]

I've entered all of the SSID information into the card properties and it still shows up as network cable disconnected.

[Terrahawk]

I assume you have the correct security (WEP/WPA/WPA2/None) options set, and the correct password/passphrase set? You need to make sure that the card is successfully associated with the access point before it will show up as connected. Merely entering the data is no guarantee that the card will associate in a timely fashion, or at all. Especially if it's just the the properties of the wireless adapter from the Device Manager.

For example, I have a X31 running XP that has an Intel 2915ABG card in it. I have a D-Link DI-524UP access point. I know I have the correct SSID and security options set in the Wireless Zero Configuration settings but it can take up to 5 minutes to associate with my access point. Until that time, it is effectively disconnected despite having the correct settings.

Do the wireless card tools that usually come with the driver successfully detect your wireless network? Most of the tools have a "scan" button. Ordinarily I do not install the tools as I use XP and XP's facilities are sufficient. However I think that they are necessary for Windows 2000 as it lacks any idea of wireless whatsoever.

[stephen74]

Please read through my previous posts in this thread to see what I have done with the system.

[mpcook]

You might try an earlier driver. I had to rollback my wireless card driver on san X31 to get it to reliably connect. This was, however, with XP. I don't have that machine any longer to let you know which version.

Mike

[Terrahawk]

Okay, i seem to have conveniently forgotten all that. Never mind, I am just repeating what everyone else has said.

[jtt3011]

This may or may not be relevent, but one thing which regularly trips me up is forgetting to set the network connection/encryption type to "shared", using WEP encryption on 11b.

Another thought: are there any 'open networks' in your vicinity, which you could try to access with your encrytion turned off?

I use Win XP, but it gives similar results to what you're getting when everything is not set up exactly right. And even XP is pretty unhelpful about telling what's wrong, and how to right it, when there's a problem.