The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Intel WiFi 2200BG and Thinkpad's Fn+F5

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by dr_st, Oct 9, 2005.

  1. dr_st

    dr_st Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    571
    Messages:
    1,437
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    55
    OK, so this thing has been bugging me for some time.

    My T42 came with the 8.1.0.28 driver for the Intel 2200BG preinstalled. Everything works fine. A couple of times I tried to update the driver to it's newest version (9.something). Once manually and once through IBM's software installer.

    The problem is that whenever I do that, I lose the ability to control the power state of the wireless radio through Fn+F5. Whenever I press that I get a message of the sort "Cannot change the power state of the 802.11 radio, please reinstall driver". And since I like the Fn+F5 functionality, the only thing that works for me is reverting back to the 8.1.0.28 version that came preinstalled.

    It's not a big problem, because this driver version seems to be working fine, but is there some way to update the driver and still retain IBM's control over the WiFi adapter?
     
  2. dr_st

    dr_st Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    571
    Messages:
    1,437
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    55
    Come on people, if my original question is too stupid and/or confusing, just answer me this, dear Thinkpad users:

    1) Which version of the Wireless driver do you have installed? (You can check in the Thinkpad software installer)

    2) Can you control the wireless radio through Fn+F5?
     
  3. ZaZ

    ZaZ Super Model Super Moderator

    Reputations:
    4,982
    Messages:
    34,001
    Likes Received:
    1,415
    Trophy Points:
    581
    Personally use the driver from Intel's site.
     
  4. gamebot

    gamebot Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    2
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    I also have same problem as you have. I can not figure out what is wrong and how to fix that. If somebody knows the solution of this problem, please let us know.
     
  5. PubDC

    PubDC Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    1
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    It's gone worse : I received my Thinkpad, and used the Software Installer successfully a couple of times. In fact, I promoted this fine feature with other users. All worked fine, Fn+F5 and the Access Connections did their job without flaw.

    Last week, after I ran another Software Installer, I lost wirless functionality (not just the Fn+F5, the entire radio is gone !).

    IBM support has not been much of a help. They don't even seem to have access to prior driver versions (at HP/Compaq, these can be found on the website!). They must be so happy now that they can hide behind the IBM vs Lenovo thing...

    The versions that worked :
    - wireless 2200BG 9.0.2.21
    - access connections 3.71
    - on screen display ???

    Not working :
    - wireless 2200BG 9.0.2.31
    - access connections 3.81
    - on screen display ???

    What why how ????

    I have informed IBM suppport of this, but do you think they would quickly remove the updates from their site to avoid spreading this damage any further ? Nope.

    Anybody found a solution to this ?

    PS System restore won't work either, it claims (after 15mins) that no changes have been made to the system and thus no restore is done.