THINKPAD T430S + MC7750 GOBI 4000 ISSUES

[stonesy]

Hi Guys,

First off, thank you for this very wonderful resource. Now, I will try to make this short and simple and hope someone can help me out.

I currently am using a T430s which I ordered a Sierra MC7550 (GOBI 4000) mini PCI card for to have internet (4G) on the go via verizon.

I followed all instructions and installed the card without any issue. I booted the notebook and notice a little popup in my tool tray that said the hardware was not successfully installed. I then tried using System update to install the driver which seemed to have installed everything successfully. I opened my network connections and still didn't see the new device so I decided to open up device manager and saw that something was wrong.

The MC7750 was listed under "Other devices" instead of "Networking" and had the yellow exclamation point next to it.
Currently the exact error is as follows:

The drivers for this device are not installed. (Code 28)
There is no driver selected for the device information set or element.
To find a driver for this device, click Update Driver.

I tried manually downloading/installing the driver from Lenovo's site, using System update, manually pointing to the downloaded driver's path and nothing seems to fix it.

I am hoping someone could help me here. I'm not sure if this is Lenovo branded or not however I'm not getting any BIOS errors upon boot. I'm running the latest BIOS and Windows 7 Pro 64bit.

There's not much information on this card via the net and I assume this is because of it being a newer model? I am unable to return the card so if someone could please chime in and let me know a solution I would really appreciate it. If there's anything else I should list here please let me know.

Thanks,

Tony

[stonesy]

UPDATE: After hours and hours of research and contacting lenovo support via phone to no avail I decided to install the MC770 driver (same device, but for AT&T) and downloaded the installation file from AT&T and VIOLA! It installed and I was able to see it in my device manager under Network adapters.

I'm not sure if its fully working yet because I had no idea I needed a sim card.. I thought i could just call up verizon with my IEMI number and have it activated... either way I consider this one step closer and it leads me to believe that something is up with the driver download from LENOVO. Also, could I buy a prepaid Verizon sim card and use it in here or?

IF this will work without any issues... I hope this can help someone else to prevent them from going through what I went through!!

*** I ask that you guys still kindly reply to let me know if I am missing something here. Thanks.

[TTY]

Hello and welcome to the forum!

If you installed the MC7700 driver, that should be OK, as the MC7750 and the MC7700 use the same driver:
http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/downloa ... D=DS029028

According to

http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/product ... D=PD024643

the MC7750 comes with a Verizon SIM card.

You might also want to take a look at this:

http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/downloa ... MIGR-68495

[stonesy]

Wow, thanks for the quick reply. OK so something weird is going on here.

I definitely do have a MC7750 as it has a huge sticker on it.. however I went to the Verizon store today to activate my device, gave them the IEMI number and they said the device isn't supported on their network?

I then contacted AT&T and had them check the IEMI number and they confirmed that the device is eligible to be used on their network without any issue. Does this make sense to you in any way?

This might explain why the driver wasn't work? If I understand correctly, according to my research both the MC770 and MC7750 are identical cards but for different carriers? MC770 for AT&T and MC7750 for Verizon?

After I got home I did notice that some people are selling MC7750 cards for ATT which baffles me. I definitely am missing or confusing something here but I can't figure it out.

So to sum it up, my card will not work with Verizon but with AT&T as far as they are telling me.

Could you or someone else shed some light on this for me? I don't want to sign up for any plans until im 100% confident that it will work.

Thanks again for the prompt reply. Wayyyy better than Lenovo support

-Tony

[stonesy]

by the way, I already had the Lenovo activation on my computer and already used that and like I said last night in my prior posts its only allowing me to activate at&t.

[TTY]

Hello,

i don't use WWAN myself, but i can imagine that a Sierra Wireless AirPrime MC7750, that doesn't have a Lenovo part number on it, might not work in a Lenovo notebook. The Lenovo P/N for the MC7750 is 0A36318, the service part number is 04W3791.

If the card still won't connect, it might be a good idea to use the driver that Lenovo offers, instead of the driver from AT&T, as the latter might have been adapted to the AT&T network.

You wrote that you installed a driver for a MC770. I can't find any such device, neither on the Sierra Wireless site nor on the AT&T site nor on the Lenovo site. So i can't confirm whether a MC770 and the MC7750 would be identical cards or not. But there is no card, which is identical to the MC7750, and that is meant to be used on the AT&T network. That is because Verizon and AT&T use completely different radio technologies on their respective networks.

In my first message, the link to the MC7750 support page was wrong. Here is the correct link:

http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/product ... D=PD024643

Lenovo sells a GOBI 4000 card that is meant to be used on the AT&T network. It's called Sierra Wireless AirPrime MC7700, the Lenovo part number is 0A36320, the service part number is 04W3792. Here's a link to the Lenovo support page for that card:

http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/product ... D=PD024211

This document from the Sierra Wireless site shows the differences between the MC7750 and the MC7700:

http://www.sierrawireless.com/en/produc ... dules.ashx

[bill bolton]

however I went to the Verizon store today to activate my device, gave them the IEMI number and they said the device isn't supported on their network?

The bottom line here is that if Verizon doesn't recognise the card IMEI as being a supportable device according to their own network whitelist, you'll never be able to establish connection to their WWAN.

Cheers,

Bill B.

[thepinkpanter]

UPDATE: After hours and hours of research and contacting lenovo support via phone to no avail I decided to install the MC770 driver (same device, but for AT&T) and downloaded the installation file from AT&T and VIOLA! It installed and I was able to see it in my device manager under Network adapters.

I'm not sure if its fully working yet because I had no idea I needed a sim card.. I thought i could just call up verizon with my IEMI number and have it activated... either way I consider this one step closer and it leads me to believe that something is up with the driver download from LENOVO. Also, could I buy a prepaid Verizon sim card and use it in here or?

IF this will work without any issues... I hope this can help someone else to prevent them from going through what I went through!!

*** I ask that you guys still kindly reply to let me know if I am missing something here. Thanks.

Hello Stonesy,

would you please post the AT&T link and dirver you used?

thanks a lot