T42 Wireless Card Not Recognized

[gg63]

I purchased a used motherboard to swap out since I was having the video card issue. The components were slightly different on this board than the original. Radeon 9600 instead of a 7500. 1.7 processor instead of 1.5. Got it in and everything worked fine except the wireless card. The card worked fine in the old board. Windows doesn't recognize it at all. It believes its unplugged.

Is there some set-up issue I'm missing for it to recognize the wireless? Or did I just get screwed on the used board? I checked the Bios and the wireless is enabled.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

G

[ajkula66]

Welcome to the forum!

Are you getting a yellow exclamation mark in the Device Manager?

Have you tried booting from a "live" Linux CD to check whether the card is "seen" there?

[gg63]

Thank you.

No exclamation mark. The device isn't even listed. Its like it doesn't even exist.

Live Linux CD?

[ajkula66]

Here you go:

http://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=67

Download the CD image and burn it as an ISO file, then boot from it.

If there's no wireless card to be "seen", you definitely have a hardware problem.

Good luck.

[MrMaguire]

Have you checked in the BIOS to see if the card is detected and enabled, i would definitely start with that.

[gg63]

Alright I have Linux up. Forgive me I'm out of my element here. Where do you find device information on Linux so i can see if it recognizes it?


I checked the Bios. It is enabled for wirelsss but I don't recall anything specific about the card.

Thanks

G

[Neil]

do two things in a terminal window:

Code: Select all

iwconfig

to see what your wireless card is called (I assume it is wlan0 for the rest of this, but it can be eth0, eth1, wlan1, anything).

Code: Select all

sudo ifconfig wlan0 up

will turn the device on, assuming it's called wlan0.

[gg63]

its says no wireless extensions. And error getting interface flags: no such device.


I guess that means there is something wrong with the board or the wireless card. Most likely the board.

Thanks for the Linux lesson. Interesting.

Thanks

G

[dr_st]

I guess that means there is something wrong with the board or the wireless card. Most likely the board.

I'd say most likely the wireless card. It happened to my T42 at some point.

[parangles]

I hope I'm not hijacking this post *. Just bought a T42 to replace my 600X.
The WiFi drops the connection to my router which is 2 feet away and picks up a neighbour and then drops that etc, etc.
I think these T40 series have wireless card problems because I see a lot of cards being sold on eBay,
and a lot of the laptops saying 'no wireless' ( ie 'not working' in ebayese )
Does anyone know if this is true ? If so I wont play around with new drivers etc.
Mine is type 2373 PSU with an Intel 802.11bg /2200BG card- are there better ones ?

Re Linux- I have tried probably 10 Linux distros and now use Linux Puppy for repair/diagnosis - very small, CD runs from ram,
no need to install, 421 or 431 versions work better on older machines .

* Please let me know-I'll start a new post.
Thanks!

[Neil]

Of the dozen, or so, T4x machines I've owned I've only come across one defective Intel wireless card, and one machine with a loose Southbridge chip that happened to cause the network connection (wireless and ethernet) to drop out. But, my test sample is tiny compared to the numbers of these machines sold, so what-do-I-know?

[ajkula66]

On hundreds of machines using 2200BG that have passed through my house, I've never had a single problem.

I currently have two connected and running 24/7/365. No issues.

That being said, some routers tend to like IBM's Atheros-chipped cards better. If updating the driver to the latest one doesn't help, you may want to try the swap and see if the situation improves.

http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc ... wc05ww.zip

The only card out of this generation that I've been less than pleased with is Intel 2915ABG, both on ThinkPads and ToughBooks. If one doesn't need the "a" range, 2200BG is an excellent card for what it's designed to do.

My experiences only.

[parangles]

gg63 - where are you with your problem ?
My suggestion would be to buy a card, change, and see if that helps.
Not expensive- I saw one for $11 inc shipping on ebay.
You need to research for the best one.
( I will have to get around to installing new drivers
when I have time- ajkula66, thanks for the link,
saved me a lot of searching. Should work, readme says
the new ver 12 xxx addresses dropped connections )

[parangles]

I have moved my problem to a new post. Thanks
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 02&start=0