T42 Wireless Connection

[white avenger]

Hi, I'm new here, and I have little to no training with computers, so I hope that I'm posting this in the right place, and please, be patient with me as I try to explain this problem that neither I nor any of my more computer knowledgeable friends can figure out.

I've used and been quite satisfied with an IBM Thinkpad T42 for several years. So satisfied, in fact, that, when the opportunity to buy a second one at a very reasonable price, I bought it as a spare. It came without a hard drive, but since I had a spare one of those (I'm a big believer in spare parts for everything) that wasn't a problem. Now I have two T42's both working perfectly. Now, here is my problem:

Call them Computer A and Computer B. Both A & B work fine, no problem. But when I swap he hard drives, Computer A with Hard Drive B gets no wireless signal. It doesn't even have the wireless icon in the lower tool bar. Same thing for Computer B with Hard Drive A. No wireless signal. Put them back in the original computers, and wireless service returns. I have a wireless device that installs in the PCMCIA slot, and with it, the mismatched computer/hard drive combinations work perfectly.

Has anyone here ever ran into anything like this, and is here any kind of simple fix that a non computer person could employ to fix it?

[Harryc]

It's possible that you have (2) different mPCI wireless devices in the (2) machines. What is in each? Start with device manager ....
Also, why are you swapping drives?

[white avenger]

Also, why are you swapping drives?

I just KNEW that someone was going to ask this.

I bought the second Thinkpad (the one that came without the hard drive) because the screen on my original one was beginning to go dim, and I could actually buy it cheaper than have a new screen installed. My intention was to just put my old hard drive in the newer computer and use it that way. I did that, and the wireless function wouldn't work, so I put the Hard drive back. Later, I put my spare hard drive in the newer computer a few days later so that my granddaughter could watch movies on our trip to Texas. When I did, the wireless function worked fine. That got me curious, so I swapped both hard drives, and neither computer would work wireless. Swap them back, and the both worked.

As I said originally, I'm not very knowledgeable about computers, but I would have thought that either hard drive would work the same in either computer, and I was just wondering why that wasn't the case here.

[Harryc]

Like I said you could have different wireless cards, therefore different drivers.