Thinkpads Forum

Hello all,

New member here. I've got a X60 which I love (although I bought it a month before the X61 was released ), as well as an R31 and a 770E which is still kicking around.

My 3945ABG is driving me crazy. It likes to randomly disconnect from the router every few hours. I did some searches and I believe I've made all the changes recommended:

Updated drivers (11.1.1.11)
Turned off checkbox for Windows to turn off this device
Set Power Management slider to Highest Performance
Set Roaming Aggressiveness to Lowest
Disabled Smart Power Down in PRO/1000 PL Network Connection

My router is a Linksys WRT54GL with the stock firmware, WPA2-SK + AES. I've set it to Channel 1 since there are a few others in the area on 6.

Is there anything else I can do to get rid of my disconnects, or should I just give up and try to find an Atheros card? I know I should have gone with that in the first place...this stupid card was more expensive, too

Thanks for any advice.

Go Atheros Go!!

Seriously, are you using Vista or XP? I had good luck with 10.5.x driver in XP when I still had my X60s with 3945ABG.

sl8763 wrote:...should I just give up and try to find an Atheros card?

Life is too short to deal with the annoyances you describe. Although the Intel a/b/g card works fine for some environments, never does it work better than the IBM/Atheros a/b/g card in any environment. Get the Atheros card from IBM and you will not regret it. [Note: You will encounter "1802" errors if you use a non-IBM card.]

The new X61s have the Intel 4965AGN. Maybe this is better.

The IBM Atheros is easy enough to find (eBay, for instance), and not that expensive. On the other hand, I've definitely found it to be warmer than the 3945ABG (right-side palm rest does get rather warm), though the slightly better range cancels out that limitation for me.

Thanks for the replies. I just bought the Atheros It was a pull from a T60 and according to what I've found is compatible with the X60 (Anatel Atheros AR5BXB6). I had heard about the extra heat, but I always keep my laptops on cooling pads so hopefully that'll take care of it. Hm, maybe I can put the Intel card into my R31...

I guess my follow-up question is, am I going to run into any problems the next time I do a full system restore from the Lenovo partition? Since I assume the image is set up for my Intel card.

I have the Atheros card with the same issues even with the router a few feet away. Uninstalling Access Connections fixed it. Been rock solid since. This is the second time I've tried AC with no joy.

I second the suggestion of uninstalling AC. At least with X60s/3945ABG, I had much better luck with Windows XP WZC.

Interesting, I will definitely give that a try. Thanks for the tip!

edit: sugo, forgot to reply that I am on XP

I've not used the 3945, but my previous notebook (T42p) had Atheros-based wireless (802.11g) and my X61T tablet with 4965-based wireless seems more stable than the Atheros one.

+1 for the AGN cards, mine in my x61t is way more stable than my old ABG card in my previous laptop.

+2 for the AGN card (FRU# 42T0825). I saw noticeable improvement in range and stability over the atheros ABG card in my x60 and macbook. more so on the macbook even though it only has two antennaes.

Update:

After uninstalling the Access Connections software, the connection problems have pretty much disappeared. Managing it through Windows seems to be the way to go. I guess I'll keep this Atheros card around as a backup.

Thanks to proaudioguy and sugo for the suggestion!