Geek Question
By Mitch Berg
A few weeks ago, I spent a little tax refund money on a corporate-surplus Lenovo Thinkpad T60. I love it so far – fast, clean, tons and tons of memory, and of course I’ve been using Thinkpads at one job or another for the past 12 years or so, so I don’t take any convincing about what good machines they are.
But it’s got one interesting bug that’s got me stumped.
The wireless adapter will run just fine – indeed, it gets a signal pretty much everywhere in the house, which is something I’ve never managed with laptops before this.
But periodically, the Adapter will switch itself to “disabled”. The period varies – it can run just fine for a day or two, or it can flip in ten minutes. I usually wind up going to the Network Connections control panel and clicking to Enable the Wireless Network Connection (which will usually spawn an “Enabling” dialog, and then flash a quick “Enable failed” message. Then I reboot Windows (XP) and things work fine.
Anyone know what the problem is, and what I can do to fix it?
Thanks in advance.
April 20th, 2010 at 12:10 pm
Is there anything in the BIOS that looks pertinent?
Maybe re-seat the wireless card (if it is a card) in the slot?
Maybe make sure the internal antenna wire is solidly in place?
All I can think of, off the top of my head.
April 20th, 2010 at 12:27 pm
1. Do you have a cordless phone?
2. Does the connection drop when you are talking on the phone.
I had a similar problem, with the wireless cutting off for what seemed to be no reason. Turned out that the signal from the phone receiver interfered with the wifi signal. I changed the channel on the router and that solved the problem.
April 20th, 2010 at 12:29 pm
This is the one I’ve heard about with Thinkpads for several years:
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/CommentView.aspx?guid=dc75de35-c310-43c9-9adc-eba0e0c072d5
Similar to this one:
http://betweengo.com/2006/10/31/thinkpad-t60-wireless-keeps-powering-off/
April 20th, 2010 at 2:18 pm
At Micro-center in St Louis Park on Hyway 100 I bought a nice new laptop with a native Windows install for $300. Works perfect. Why screw around?
April 20th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
Soliah,
Because I got a ThinkPad, which is as close to bullet-proof as you can get in a computer. It’s probably 3-4 years old, but it’s built to a VERY high standard of quality, using high-quality components. It’s built to last.
And it was $285.
April 20th, 2010 at 3:36 pm
Sure, get me to register by asking a geeky question.
Check your power settings as well. Sometimes there will be deeply buried settings in there that try to preserve your battery power by disconnecting the WiFi if the system is sleeping for a couple of minutes.
April 20th, 2010 at 4:35 pm
Ditto, Offtopic!
Does it ever happen when you are plugged in, Mitch?
It may seem too obvious for words, but some thinkpads have a physical switch you can use to turn the radio on & off. Could you be bumping it?
Find the model number of your Lenovo & go to the the Lenovo support web page & download new drivers & user manuals.
Thinkpads have had great support with updated drivers in the past, though I think Lenovo has slacked off from the days when they were made by IBM.
April 20th, 2010 at 4:41 pm
We had problems with some of the laptops at work where the wireless would go disabled if they were using battery power, just like offtopic said. Dont remember if they were thinkpads or not. Annoying whatever they were.
April 20th, 2010 at 4:55 pm
Most home wireless routers are set to channel 6 by default, sometimes setting them to channel 1 or 11 helps. The routers operate in the 2.4 Ghz frequency range which is shared by lots of other wireless devices (neighbors networks, wireless phones, microwaves, meter reading devices, etc) that can overload that bandwidth and cause dropouts. I’ve also lost signal when ShopVacs, table saws and chop saws were running.
If Offtopic is correct you might be looking at an old battery that doesn’t take a full charge anymore.
April 20th, 2010 at 5:20 pm
Look at the bottom of the laptop for a tag that says something like “type: 2668-7mu”. That’s the model number you need to get to the proper support page on the lenovo site.
April 20th, 2010 at 6:16 pm
You know those things is made by the Red Chinese, don’t you Mitch?
April 20th, 2010 at 7:20 pm
You know those things is made by the Red Chinese, don’t you Mitch
Yep. And let’s give the yellow horde its’ due. The T60 rocks.
April 21st, 2010 at 10:18 am
What? I thought the Russians made the T60?
April 22nd, 2010 at 8:29 am
I have been having the same problem with the Dell’s at work. The problem on those is Dell installed a “connection manager” that is supposed to make it easier to keep track of wireless connections. All it does is get in the way. After I uninstalled the Dell connection manager they all work fine. You will have to manage them manually, but how tough is that?