Activating WWAN on x200s

[jll]

I have inserted a SIM card in my x200s. I try to enable WWAN. I do Fn+F5, click Radio On for the WWAN, after a little while the status becomes "on" but the WWAN led does not light up. When I call the setup screen again the WWAN status is Off again.

I run Windows 7.

What should I do ?

Thanks,
Jean-Louis

[sliver]

Hi,


im also having problems with wwan on my x200, when i press f5+fn there is only wlan and bluetooth, in the access connections i can see the wwan, but it writes me "no sim card inserted", but i inserted one.
Maybe some drivers are missing?
I downloaded this http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-73681
Maybe you can say me what you have done and installed that you see wwan in fn+f5

Thank you

[tjp888]

Assuming your SIM card is OK, have you called your wireless carrier to activate the WWAN? They will need to know it's IMEI number.

[sliver]

My carrier is A1 ( Austria ), i will call them tomorrow, if this works you are my hero

[domi]

Assuming your SIM card is OK, have you called your wireless carrier to activate the WWAN? They will need to know it's IMEI number.

Activation is a country/operator-specific thing (the original poster is in Belgium, not the US). Over here (Finland), there's nothing to activate: if your SIM card has a mobile broadband contract attached to it, you can use it in any device, regardless of IMEI. I recently purchased an X100e, took the SIM card from my older phone, put it in the X100e and here I went.

[msalmon]

Hi Sliver

Is your problem solved? I would like to here what the solution was. I have the same problem on a X201.


Thanks,

Michael

[Randers45]

I have experienced a "no SIM card inserted" problem for a long time, and believe I have slowly arrived at an understanding of the problem: It is a heating problem. The problem never occurs when the machine is cold. But when it has heated up for 10-15 minutes, it frequently is unable to see the SIM card, or if you already have a connection the connection becomes unstable.

Reboot usually does not help. This fits with the heating hypothesis, as the machine is still warm.

Going on standby for 10-15 minutes usually solves the problem. When waking up from standby, the X200 can suddenly see the SIM card it could not see becore standby. This is a strong indication of a heating problem.

My first instinct some 14 months ago was to blame the wireless carrier, especially because the connection tended to get unstable after a while. I even tried to change carrier. But having to stronger signal did not help any. Trying early morning with little trafic did not help any either. So it was clearly not a carrier problem.

Meanwhile I have been travelling with the X200 and have tried other carriers in other countries. The problem remains the same regardless of the carrier.

I have tried to adjust the power settings to minimal level. That doesn't help. Perhaps the ventilator simply works less, so the inside temperature remains about the same, even with reduced power consumption. But as said above, a radical power reduction by going into standby, clearly does help.

It could be either the SIM-card or the X200 components, that cannot tolerate the heating. In my analysis, it is not the SIM-card that is too sensitive. Because the problems often shows when a cold SIM-card has just been inserted. Taking out the SIM-card a while and letting it cool doesn't help any. Whereas it clearly helps to cool the machine itself by going into standby or turning off completely for a while.

So in my diagnosis, this is simply a design flaw. Lenovo has located the SIM-card adapter inside the machine in a place where it is not sufficiently cooled. The design is not completely whacky, as the adapter often does work. But they have made a design with insufficient tolerance, so that when the computer heats up, the design parameters of the SIM-card increasing risks to be exceeded, with resulting malfunction.

This would typically be a kind of marginal situation, where some machines and users may have more problems than others, depending on small variations in the hardware, the external environment, or the usage pattern. So because the problem is somewhat irregular, it is easy to blame the carriers, or the SIM cards, or users who have forgotten this or that.

Last month, I had a warranty repair on the machine (for other reasons) and got them to deal with the SIM-card issue also. They exchanged the Ericsson SIM-card reader (and also the motherboard, but that was for the other issue). After this, I have no problems with "no SIM-card" messages.

So my suggestion for others would be to check if cooling off the machine does any good. In that case it is clearly a question of asking for exchange of the SIM-card reader, like I got.

If cooling off does not help, it might still be the SIM-card reader that is defective, but that is less certain. Would be advisable to check the problem carefully, to avoid ending up paying for a warrenty repair where they find no fault. Best way might be with a SIM-card that works well on another machine.