Thinkpads Forum

Hello everyone. I'm slowly making my way into Windows and PC hardware, but I've already hit two snags that I can't figure out.

Problem 1:

My X220 had the base ThinkPad B/G/N card and I upgraded it to the Centrino Adanced-N 6205.

Aware of the requirement to get one OK'd by Lenovo, I found several on eBay all listed specifically for Lenovo. I just installed it and now the computer claims there are no connections available with an X through the wifi card icon in the System Tray.

What went wrong? The wifi module doesn't have any Lenovo branding, and one post elsewhere stated that it needed that branding, but that was the first and only time I had read that.

Problem 2:

When on battery power, the computer will wake from sleep at random (lid closed) and will stay on until I open the lid. Then it goes back to sleep. I had finger print-power on enabled. Thinking it was a bug, I disabled it but the computer continues to wake up from sleep while on battery. Any thoughts?

If, as you state, the WiFi card does not have a Lenovo FRU # on it, then the only way to make it work in the X220 is to install a modified BIOS which will permit non-Lenovo cards. You may prefer spending $16.00 and not bothering with BIOS mods -- see below:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-6250-6250 ... 27c6f103bb
or
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-IBM-lenov ... 2a22226396

In Power Manager, you might try turning off "Allow Hybrid Sleep", and setting "Allow Wake Timers" to disable.

Have you installed the driver for the 6205? Usually you wil be notified at bootup if a card is not on the whitelist.
Driver can be downloaded here: http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/downloa ... D=DS030245

EOMtp, thank you for the link. Actually, that is the buyer from which I bought the current card. In that case, steveg47- I think you're right about the driver. I didn't install any specific drivers and was not notified at startup about a non-whitelist card.

For some reason I thought the drivers were already installed, sort of like Apple does with the 5 GiB printer driver folder on the Install Disk. I'm so used to all the drivers already being there that I thought I had made a mistake ordering the new card. I'll check it out and post.

emtee3511, thank you. I'll take a look to see if Hybrid Sleep is enabled along with the wake timers. What is Hybrid Sleep anyway? I get a bit lost in all the customization options in Windows and its hardware sometimes.

"I get a bit lost in all the customization options in Windows and its hardware"

Me too I just grabbed this info from the net:
"In Hybrid Sleep mode, system saves any open documents and programs to memory and to your hard disk, and then puts your computer into a low-power state as in normal Sleep/Standby state. An advantage of hybrid sleep is that if a power failure occurs, Windows can restore your work from your hard disk. If a power failure such as power outage occurs when your work is saved only to memory (as in Sleep mode), all work is lost. In Hyrid Sleep mode, if the computer suddenly loses power, users can still recover to last working state as when computer enters hybrid sleep mode because all data in memory is saved in hiberfil.sys hibernation file. In this case, the computer is acted exactly same with hibernation mode to resume computer activity, and yet still enjoy the benefit of fast return to full operation of Sleep mode"

Thanks, emtee3511. I'm glad I'm not the only one who can get a bit lost in the customization. Thanks for the info, too. It sounds like hybrid sleep benefits desktops and laptops with failing batteries the most.

I went through the settings of every power mode, and only AC Power modes had hybrid sleep enabled. I disabled those, but the computer never seemed to wake up while on AC power. I also read a similar complaint from another model forum and it was suggested to go through Task Scheduler and look for tasks that are allowed to wake up the computer. I didn't find any, but Windows feels big and vast with redundant and hidden options, so maybe one is still lurking. I just put the ThinkPad to sleep...now the waiting begins.

The Intel drivers did the trick, thanks for the link steveg47. Downloaded, installed, and voila, access. I didn't think it would be that simple.

While I'm posting, I have a related question. When I reassembled the computer after installing the new card, the keyboard arrow keys sound more hollow, as if they have more vertical movement than before (like they're not clipped in properly). I reseated the keyboard many times and checked all the screws. Everything seems secure and I followed the FRUs to the letter. Is there a ThinkPad trick I'm missing or is this just part of the design? (I've haven't had the computer long enough to know for sure if a change has occurred).

Update:

I'm not sure exactly what I did, but so far its sleeping soundly through the night. When it would wake up, I would open the screen. Then it would flicker the screen and go back to sleep, but this time turning off the green moon icon on the top of the screen cover. Upon waking, it would not be quick but rather very slow as the Resuming Windows screen animated the 45 second wait time.

Now its ready to go upon opening the screen and swiping my finger. Hopefully it stays that way.

On another note, on battery power and on battery saving power modes, the screen back lighting seems to flicker at brightnesses 1/2 and less. Has anyone else experienced that? This is on a fully charged 9-cell with the IPS display.