thinkpad access connections can no longer turn my wireless card on

I have a thinkpad t42p (model# 2373htu) running windows xp and the "IBM thinkpad access connections" program to configure the builtin "11a/b/g wireless lan mini pci adapter".

To be even more precise on one detail, I have two disks in this laptop, each with windows xp installed, one is for work use (and the software installed on it is specified by the IT group) and the other copy of xp is for personal use and has software I bought on it. The bios allows me to select which drive I boot from.

Recently, I was required (a forced download/reboot when I connected to my jobs network*) to install a new version of the access connections program in the work copy of xp, version 4.13. I don't know what (if any) other software might have been installed by IT as part of that patch. I'm pretty certain that some new anti-virus and other security software got loaded.

(*the forced download is why I have two copies of xp, so when IT messes something up, it is only "their" copy.)

However, upon doing so, the wireless card no longer will "turn on". That is, the wireless card doesn't turn on when I boot the computer using that drive as the boot drive and when I hit the fn+f5 key, the menu comes up where I "should" be able to turn the wireless radio on, but clicking the "on" button does nothing, the radio stays off. I can click the bluetooth radio on and off, but I don't use that for anything. there is another way to turn the radio on in the access connections program, but that also does nothing. No, when the software attempts to connect using the adapter, it can't because the radio isn't turned on--I can't see the exact message at the moment, because the laptop is sitting in a docking station and is using a wired connection.

In contrast, when I boot the home copy of xp, the wireless radio turns on at boot time, and the fn+f5 key allows me to turn it both off and on. It is, of course, using a previous version of access connections, version 4.12.

Does anyone know how to "roll back" access connections to the previous version to see if that corrects this problem? Are there other suggestions for trouble shooting it? How about device drivers? Is it possible that I got a new and broken device driver for this wireless device?

Thanks,

-Chris

Reply to
Chris F Clark
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Chris,

I'd recommend you go into the Device Manager ("Start" -> "Run" ->

"devmgmt.msc") and uninstall the WiFi adapter. Reboot the machine and run the ThinkVantage program again.

-- Andreas K.

Reply to
sveasoft

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