Wireless not recognized/working(fixed but with new issue)

[johnnydotexe]

I went through the driver list for the z61m series on Lenovo's website to gather all the current drivers for everything to burn to disc as a makeshift "recovery disc" to have on hand in the event a reformat is needed. Basically I got everything that Win XP Pro SP3 didn't have working drivers for, but there's still one "unknown networking device" in the device manager...the wireless. I tried the Intel PRO/Wireless driver and the ThinkPad Wireless LAN driver and neither seem to work.

Do I HAVE to have the ThinkVantage Access Manager and the ThinkPad Power Management installed before installing the wireless driver? And how do I figure out which wireless adapter I have? I honestly don't know if it's the Intel adapter or the ThinkPad adapter, and I really don't want to crack open the laptop to find out.

EDIT: Got it working by installing .NET 3.0 + ThinkPad Power Management + ThinkVantage Access Manager + Intel PRO/Wireless driver. The new problem is my logons are greatly slowed down after these installs, and I'm not longer seeing the normal acocunt logon screen. I'm not seeing a "Log On to Windows" dialog where I enter my username and password. How do I change this back to the normal logon screen?

[Harryc]

What is the machine type/model as listed on the sticker on the bottom of the machine?

[johnnydotexe]

It's a 4950-47u model of the z61m.

After installing .NET 3.0, ThinkPad Power Management and ThinkVantage Access Manager...I installed the Intel PRO/Wireless driver and wireless now works, but now my windows logon changed and login time has increased. See EDIT in first post for details.

[johnnydotexe]

Apparently when you install Intel PRO/Wirelss, it replaces a windows login-related .dll called "awgina.dll" with its own .dll called "iwpdgina.dll", disabling the welcome screen/fast user switching.

The fix for this is to completely remove the Intel PRO/Wireless software and hope the new .dll reverts back to the old .dll, or use a program called "XP_FixLogon." It's a mini fix.exe file that you open to run a quick check on the awgina.dll file to tell if it's default/standard or not, and if not it will fix the file and the change will be effective upon reboot. I used this method and it seems to have worked fine.

I also removed ThinkPad Power Management and ThinkVantage Access Manager, so I'm not sure if these application removals and the above .dll change will cause any issues with me connecting to WiFi, I am unable to test that at this time due to the area I am currently in. The software itself seems to still be fully functional.