System Update killed Access Connections...

[gpvillamil]

I ran System Update, as I have so many times before and...

it hung at 92% while updating the WLAN drivers.

I rebooted, and Access Connections failed to establish a connection. Also, the Wireless status icon (signal strength) is gone.

Using the Windows XP Wireless connection dialog worked fine, and I was able to connect to the Internet.

I manually installed the updated Intel WLAN drivers, and Access Connections (both unpacked to c:\drivers, then run setup from there) and rebooted.

Access Connections still shows no sign of life - though XP connects fine.

Anyone seen anything like this? Any ideas for a fix?

[ryengineer]

Whenever you update your wireless driver, you must uninstall Access Connections first and reboot. Then uninstall the old drivers, reboot and then install the newer ones then reboot once again. After rebooting, reinstall Access Connections.

Wireless LAN ThinkPad Installation instructions
Notes:

If you use ThinkVantage Access Connections, the following software must be installed.

-ThinkVantage Access Connections version 4.4 or higher.
-Lenovo System Interface Driver version 1.00.0702 or higher.
-ThinkPad Power Management Driver for Windows 98 Vista, XP, 2000, Me, SE Vista version 1.42 or higher.
-Hotkey Features for Windows Vista 32-bit and 64-bit, XP, 2000 version 2.01.0703 or higher.

[Ken Fox]

Whenever you update your wireless driver, you must uninstall Access Connections first and reboot. Then uninstall the old drivers, reboot and then install the newer ones then reboot once again. After rebooting, reinstall Access Connections.

I would say you need to do this SOME of the time. The latest updates I did was yesterday, on my huge stable of Thinkpads, including T60s, X60s, and an old X32. I did all of them "automatically" through System Update. The wireless drivers were updated on all, but there was no AC update. Of these systems, I had no problems except with the X32. On that system I did have to uninstall the wireless driver and AC, and reinstall them in that order. With the other systems this round worked ok without problems.

I have had considerably more problems with these updates some prior times, including a couple of times when AC was simply unusable, no matter what I did. Ultimately, they seem to fix the problems with a new AC release, but it sure would be nice if they would check the functionality on supported systems of the wireless driver packages they release with AC, before they release either.

[gpvillamil]

Well, it looks like the problem is specifically with the latest version of Access Connections, 4.42. Downgrade to 3.82 worked fine. Now installing 4.23 to see how that works.

[gpvillamil]

Finally got everything working.

The key is that the new Intel wireless drivers don't seem to install completely via System Update, or via Update Driver... in the Device Manager. You have to run iProInst.EXE, which is part of the driver package.

After this, installing Access Connections via System Update worked.

Now AC4.4.2 is working with the new drivers.

[bullarded]

I thought (I will do it again tomorrow) I had done all of this in the proper order and the end result is properly (apparently) new 11 series wireless driver on my x60s with also the AC 4.42 installed afterwards.

But the wireless won't really "turn on" and the Fn F5 settings are weird - they won't respond.

The little wireless antenna is on (all the time - the light) and the switch works on/off with messages - but the radio doesn't function.

Appreciate any suggestions beyond this thread.

Arggh@@@!!

thanks!

[Ken Fox]

I thought (I will do it again tomorrow) I had done all of this in the proper order and the end result is properly (apparently) new 11 series wireless driver on my x60s with also the AC 4.42 installed afterwards.

But the wireless won't really "turn on" and the Fn F5 settings are weird - they won't respond.

The little wireless antenna is on (all the time - the light) and the switch works on/off with messages - but the radio doesn't function.

Appreciate any suggestions beyond this thread.

Arggh@@@!!

thanks!

Try downloading the latest lenovo version of the wireless card driver for your wireless card, as well as Access Connections. Have these on the hard disk somewhere that you know where to find them. You can go to the "support" tab on a Lenovo page, put in your machine type, and should be able to pull these up. Be sure you are downloading versions for the operating system you are using (e.g. for XP or Vista).

Use Control Manager->Add or Remove Programs, then remove both the wireless driver (if Intel hardware, will be called "Proset" probably) and Access Connections.

Reboot.

Click on your downloaded wireless Driver, notice where it is being extracted, then go to that directory and install it (this can be confusing sometimes; you are looking for a "setup" or similar program; if one doesn't work, then use the other one).

Reboot.

Click on your downloaded Access Connections file, note where it is being extracted, go there, then install it.

Reboot.

See if this all works.

If not, you likely have some sort of incompatibility. Most Likely, lenovo will address this incompatibility with the next release. For now, you can either revert to earlier versions of the wireless driver and AC that once worked, or just use the native Windows wireless functionality until Lenovo solves whatever AC problems exist with the wireless driver for your system. Most probably they will fix it within a month or so.

From the standpoint of curiousity, I don't know why they keep updating this stuff, especially with XP which is a mature operating system. I have updated these drivers (wireless and AC) many times and have never noticed any sort of improvement as a result.

[gpvillamil]

Here are slightly more detailed instructions if you have an Intel wireless card:

1) download the driver package from the Lenovo website
2) run it (this will unpack the drivers to c:\drivers\win\wlanint2 or something like that
3) download access connections from the Lenovo website
4) run the package (this will unpack to c:\drivers\w2k\accon)
5) use control panel add/remove to remove the intel drivers
6) use control panel add/remove to remove access connections
7) reboot
go to c:\drivers\win\wlanint2\xp\apps\x32 and run the setup program from there (the setup files in the drivers dir won't do the trick), note: your directory structure will be different if you're not using Win XP 32 bit.
9) reboot
10) run the access connections set up program
11) reboot
12) download and install the hotkey features program
13) reboot

That should have you up and running.