Fix for weak Wifi, no wifilight on..Atheros

I posted earlier that both my R61's had no wifi light even when it was working. I also noticed that my home wifi network signal was WEAK even when i was standing on top of the router.

I happened to come by a driver that happens to work much better on the "41W1685 SBB 11ABGWIFI WL LAN USEULAANZ " wifi cards.

I got the driver from a toshiba site:
http://aps.toshiba-tro.de/wlan/pages/download.html

its the last one:
http://www.toshiba-tro.de/tools/updates/atheros-wlan/atheros-wlan-vista-720164.zip

I disabled the wifi driver in the device manager and installed this EXE...works perfect now. The light turns on with the Hotkey and the wifi signal is 100% just like my T61 with the Intel wifi.

YMMV

 

i should add, that this should be installed in place of what Lenovo and Vista recommends. The recommended driver is the one I was having problems with

 

I have a T60 with the Thinkpad ABG card in it. I've had some problems but through some playing with Lenovo and Windows Vista drivers (ones downloaded through windows updates), I've managed to get it working. I just though i'd mention an inconsistency with lenovo's software that i've noticed.

One of the requirements for Access Connections 4.41 for Vista is that the 802.11abg card that I have use driver version 7.2.0.164. However if you go to the download page for the wireless driver, they only have version 7.1.0.90.

Try it yourself. http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=MIGR-67283
Scroll to the driver requirements, then click on the Thinkpad wireless cards to go to the drivers page.

So Lenovo requires a driver version that they don't have. Yes, this driver can be downloaded from windows update, but why hasn't Lenovo made this an official driver if they require it?

 

yup, that was the core of my problems as well.