No Wireless B 575 [ Edited ]

[thisismyname]

I got a B 575 for my wife the other day.  I though I would be a super smart guy and wipe the hard drive to get rid of all that bundled software that really just gets in way, in my opinion at least.  So I wiped the HDD that had windows 7 home premium.  Took an OEM Windows 7 Home Premium that I had, and reinstalled it fresh.  First issue was that it would never reboot by itself during the installation.  I would have to shut it off the hard way, then turn it back on, where it would continue like nothing happened.  After the installation was complete, everything worked fine as far as I could tell, except for the wireless.  The drivers were installed, all drivers were installed except for the fingerprint reader.  The wireless device showed up in the network connections.  The problem is that, when I hit the FN + F5 to turn the wireless on and off, nothing happens.  The wireless is functional until Windows loads, at least the light is on saying it is.  And I do know that it was working before I wiped and reinstalled.  I am 99% certain the issue is that I cannot turn it on or off through the FN + F5.  The switch is on, the drivers are installed...

Any ideas?

[yigit]

can you check if the issue persists on safe mode with networking?
( press f8 to load when you see lenovo logo at start-up )

[thisismyname]

Thanks for replying.  I went ahead and installed XP and it is working fine.  I wish I saw your post earlier, but there were other issues with the Windows 7 Home Premium install.  I reinstalled cleanly, deleting all old partitions and going from scratch each time, about five times.  Every time, I had same two issues.  Computer would not shut itself off at all, even during the installation process.  I would have to hold the button down for five seconds.  And no wireless.  The wireless indicator light would turn on upon powerup, but then as soon as windows starts to load it would turn off. 

Anyhow, I got XP in there now and everything seems to be working okay.  If anyone else is having same issues with this particular model on their clean install, or not, post it up so I know if it is just me or not.

[yigit]

you may need to activate wireless in bios.
about hibernation/sleep issue, we are aware of the problem and if you install one of the windows update ( i don't remember which it is, please, search the forum ), as i remember, it'll fix it.

[fastman314]

I have the EXACT same issue with the B575 and Win7. My guess is that it needs a BIOS update to fix the issues. QA failed big time on this laptop.

[yigit]

have you checked bios?

[mreedh]

I've got the exact same problem as well and I don't see anything in the BIOS.

[yigit]

please, try to re-install power management, and test again.

[agentdr8]

YES! I finally found someone else that's having the same issue with the B575 as I am.  I was having issues with it freezing/killing explorer.exe right after the UAC prompts, so I decided to nuke the Win7 Home install and put my own Win 7 Ultimate on it.  I also experienced the lack of shutdown/reboots during installation.  I did make it through the install and managed to put all the Lenovo drivers on from the support page.  I think the 2 hotfix downloads were meant to address the reboot/shutdown issue, as it would actually turn the screen off, but it still won't fully power cycle. 

I also cannot get the Atheros wlan working, even after multiple driver installs/uninstalls/reboots/etc.  The hard switch works, as indicated by the on-screen popup.  It just won't ever find any access points.

At this point I'm pretty frustrated with the laptop, and seeing as lenovo has no BIOS updates posted, I'm guessing they aren't actively tracking these issues.  If you say Win XP works fine, I guess that's the route I'll go, since I need to drop the laptop off with its owner today and can't be bothered to wait an untold amount of time for Lenovo to address the issues.

[agentdr8]

After perusing the forums here, i saw a thread about the Y570s that also exhibit this behavior.  Seems to be an issue with GPT partitioning + Windows 7 64-bit and/or EFI.   I think since Win7 32-bit supports 4GB I'll dump the x64 flavor for now.