Lenovo Laptop T500 woes

[jedward_PITG]

Lenovo is making our company look very unprofessional.  I am embarrassed to admit that something "approved" by IBM would be sold with so many different bugs.  It is not all Lenovo's fault, as we are all aware of the horrible Vista incompatibilities.

As of 11/24/2008 - Intel offered a driver update for their wireless card that would cause the DHCP NACK renewal operation

to fail and leave the system in a stale state without network connectivity.  At first the BSOD was caused by NETw5v32.sys which has been resolved by the latest Intel driver for the Wireless unit, 5100 AGN adapter.  Now NETIO.SYS and ntkrnlpa.exe

have been causing the BSOD especially after going into Hibernation, and then going back into the OS.

I am exhausted, and have exhausted my resources to resolve this issue that no one seems to want to discuss.

Is there any professionals out there who have also experienced this issue and found a solution?

Thanks in advanced - and for allowing me to vent...

Justin

[Agotthelf Community Moderator]

Hello Justin,

that´s sad. 

Please tell us:

What system(s) appear to be affected? Models, or model types?

What OS ?

What applications (TVTs) if applicable

Summary of the observed conditions - "what happens, when?"

GFX Driver versions, are also important.

[sophware]

I'm getting DHCP renewal problems on my wireless connections with the same wireless NIC.  It may be after suspend and hibernate, but I'm not sure.  I also drop my connection from time to time, but the other two laptops (different manufacturer) here never do.  My drivers up to just now have been the latest released via the driver matrix.  Only now am I trying the 11/24 set from Intel.  So, if DHCP issue we are both having are the same, it predates the updated driver.

[jedward_PITG]

I was getting the same DHCP issue with the Intel 5100 Wireless card.  After updating the device drivers, the events went away.

Today we tried to reinstall to the default software base, and the system was having multiple errors after this was performed.

Try the Intel drivers for your DHCP issue, and if you like, I would also un register the Hibernation feature.

Run the Command Prompt as Administrator > this must be done even if you have local admin rights <

and type "powercfg.exe /hibernate off".  Even after doing this, the Sleep function did some very strange stuff.

One of the strangest things was when the system was coming out of Sleep mode, the Hard Drive indicator was on almost 100% of the time.  To trouble shoot, we disabled the "Speed Step" processor throttling.  The sleep function worked much better after disabling that thing.  Things seemed to be going well, and then in telling the system to Shut Down (BAM) BSOD

Hope there are some others out there experiencing this issue - share the knowledge ...

[sophware]

here's my update so far:

* got one DHCP failure after reboot (not after suspend or hibernate)

* got my first BSOD on this laptop ever, after updating to the Intel drivers

square one.

[amarcuvitz]

I am shocked that Lenovo hasn't addressed this problem yet!  I have spent time on the phone with them and they clearly do not have a handle on it.  My network connection will drop after several minutes of working fine after waking up from the sleep state.

I was advised to disable "computer can turn of radio" in the device manager (did nothing).  Uninstalling Access Connection eliminated the most difficult to recover from situations but the problem of smoothly getting back on the air after sleep is still there.  Most of the time turning off radio with Fn+F5 and then turning it back on will fix the problem untill the next sleep state.  This whole thing makes it very hard to use a laptop when you have to fiddle with it when you try to wake it up! 

[jedward_PITG · Accepted solution]

I actually have an update for this.  We sent the Lenovo back to the Depot.  They diagnosed the Wireless card as bad.

That would explain the DHCP errors, and the Stand By / Sleep issues.

After it was returned (obviously scrubbed) I beat the hell out of it.  Surprisingly, after all the headache, and driver updates,

the device was actually at fault.  Here are the specs that we have that currently work, otherwise your card could be

at fault also.  

Intel Wireless - 10418086 Intel 3945ABG Wireless LAN controller - aka 5100

Intel Driver version 12.0.0.75

Good luck, and remember to test all of your products thoroughly before giving them to your end client.

It would be better for you to not give it to them, find the problem, get it solved and keep the headache's to a minimum!

[amarcuvitz]

I seem to have resolved this problem.  Based on the experience described by an earlier post in this thread, I requested a replacement for my Intel 5100 wireless card.  After I installed this (only recommended for the brave and dexterous) there was no improvement.  However when I updated the driver to 12.2.0.11 from the Intel support site the connection dropping behavior has not been seen since. 

Message Edited by amarcuvitz on 01-18-2009 09:42 AM

[advent]

How did you replace the wireless card? Were there any particular steps to pay attention to? In some forums I've seen that after replacement there are BIOS problems.

Thank you