Wireless connection keeps dropping

[jlrowe]

Please help me, I have just bought a new W500 (my 6th thinkpad) and the problem that intermittently blighted my last 5 years of thinkpad ownership is back again, the problem I talk of is that the wireless connection keeps dropping.

I am 5m away from the access point (draytek vigir 2820n 802.11n)

I have the 5300AGN adaptor, I am on the latest driver 12.1.0.14: transmit power is highest, power mangement is lowest, 'Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power' is disabled

I at my wits end, I am just so sick and tired of losing connections, my old x31 was fixed by removing access connections and installing the intel connection utility.

My other SL300 has the exact same problem, the R61e that my W500 replaces did not have a problem and would keep the connection rock solid day-in, day-out.

My toshiba does not have a problem and keeps the connection all day.

I have got rid of my cordless DECT phone - no difference.

I live in a large block of apartments with 20+ 802.11g networks around, but my R61e has no problem and my G1 google phone keeps wireless connectivity going all day.

As a last resort I am buying an 802.11a access point to see if this makes any difference.

This is the same problem that has been blighting me for years and I just don't know what else I can do. I have bought a 10m CAT5 cable and I am using this to connect at the moment.

Sorry about the incoherent rant like posting, but I am just so sick and tired of this issue

[bojangles]

My W500 is the same way.. but not every day.. hard to predict what days will be good or bad....
no solutions here. .but plenty of sympathy.

[Marin85]

Check wifi power management . Most of the wifi issues come from it.

Hope this helps

Marin

[jdhurst]

If you happen to have Access Connections installed and it is a newer version, there is also a power setting in there (Wireless -> Advanced or some such) that is set to "Save power" and it turns off the wireless adapter randomly.

To everyone who wanted longer battery life (not me), we got our wish. Save power by turning things off that we need and too bad for quality and functionality. .... JDH

[Marin85]

To everyone who wanted longer battery life (not me), we got our wish. Save power by turning things off that we need and too bad for quality and functionality. .... JDH

Careful what one wishes because some day it may be indeed fulfilled Joke aside, I guess the main problem with all these power settings for wifi is that they are rather 'hidden' (e.g. like in Device Manager) and they are placed in different places (Device Manager, Power Manager, Windows Power Management, AC). And then again the bigger problem is that all those utilities tend to overwrite each other´s settings upon reboot (not always, but it happens under some circumstances).

[ajkula66]

There is a driver problem here, and lots of complaints have been seen on Lenovo's forum regarding this issue.

I can't make heads or tails out of it, but it's pretty annoying, since you never know when the wireless is going to get disconnected...and this machine (W500) is plugged 70% of the time...

[Marin85]

I don´t follow the other Lenovo forum, but can we be sure that those driver issues are not power management-related and not resolvable within the known tweaks?

[ajkula66]

Trust me, I've been tweaking this one for a month, un-installing and re-installing drivers and got absolutely nowhere. And it's NOT my router since there's five other laptops hooked up to it that don't ever get disconnected...

[Marin85]

Trust me, I've been tweaking this one for a month, un-installing and re-installing drivers and got absolutely nowhere. And it's NOT my router since there's five other laptops hooked up to it that don't ever get disconnected...

Oh, ok, so that sounds pretty serious... Is it only the Intel 5300agn card in question?

[ajkula66]

You got it, 5300AGN it is...

[donk]

Was having the same problem. Went into both the Windows and ThinkPad power management schemes and modified all settings to never turn off wifi. OK for couple of days now. ... can always turn off wifi manually when need for battery life trumps connectivity.

[jlrowe]

Well, I have a constant connection now by using a USB dongle.

As I said in my original post, as a long term thinkpad owner I have always had problems with the wireless connections going down. I used to fix the problem by not using access connections and using either windows or the intel connection utility, but this still fails so it must be a driver issue.

I have tried upgrading to access connections 5.20, this makes no difference, but now my wireless WAN card (3g) does not work!

On startup, access connections says that the driver is the wrong version and I get API errors everytime I try to connect. I have checked the lenovo site for a new WWAN driver, but the only one is still the original release, so I suppose I will have to wait until the new WWAN driver is released.

All I can say is that I am well and truly sick and tired of this nonsense that has been going on for years now, with every thinkpad I have owned. The number of hours I have spent messing around trying to get stuff working makes me want to go out and buy a mac!

[Marin85]

I don´t have any problems with my wifi under windows. But I have to admit I have selected the drivers that best work with my configuration very carefully and over longer time. And, of course, not to forget a few tweaks related to the wifi power management and the Access Connections.

Well, if you want to buy a Mac, then buy one

The error from AC is probably because you indeed don´t have the corresponding wifi driver version. Driver and AC versions are often almost in matching pairs.