Brand new T400 wireless problem

[rickrice]

Hello, I'm new to this forum, but recently bought a T400 that seems to have a wifi signal strength problem.  The T400 has Thinkpad a/b/g/n wireless and I had installed the "11b/g/n Wireless LAN Mini-PCI Express Adapter II" driver (long story here, involving upgrading to my old copy of Vista Ultimate, which wiped out all the drivers).  I have a fairly new Netgear wireless router with draft-n.  If I am in the same room, the signal strength maxes out at 91%.  If I am one room away, the signal strength varies from 0% (and sometimes drops the connection) to 60%.  I didn't have this problem with the HP laptop which preceded this unit, it always worked fine, and family members don't have this problem with other laptops.  I am wondering if the driver is wrong, or it's just a bad or lousy wifi card.  I have recovered enough to use the System Update tool, but I suspect it doesn't tell you what hardware you have and download the proper driver, it seems to only look at the existing drivers and downloads the latest versions.  Can someone enlighten me about a. what's the proper driver, and b.  could this be my problem?

[LANOgre]

The current driver is v7.6.1.237 available here:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-67351

Make sure your Netgear router is Draft 2 802.11n compliant.  Latest firmware usually adds that support. (If not already present)

Make sure your Netgear is configured to use N (but not N only).  With N you'll usually see better performance a bit away from the router rather than very close. Also be sure to use WPA2-PSK/AES for best connections.

[rickrice]

This driver doesn't seem to want to install.  I uninstalled the aforementioned 11 b/g/n driver and tried to download from a wired connection and install the driver you reference, the Thinkpad 11a/b/g/n.  It continues to tell me it can't install the driver for that device, but doesn't explain why.  Then when Windows tells me there is not a driver loaded for the network device, and goes to Windows Update to get one, it gets the same old driver I had installed, the one mentioned in my first mail.  So we remain in the same state.  I am getting rather confused, but at least things are working in the semi-crippled state.  Can you tell me how to determine what actual hardware, not driver software, exists in this machine?

thanks again

[LANOgre]

Are you sure it is the a/b/g/n card?  Post your Model/Type.  (looks like this on the bottom  1958-W5U)

You may instead had this card: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-72700

 Which is indeed an entirely different card using a different driver.

[rickrice]

Model/type is 2764-CTO.  Part of my question in my last post:  how does one tell exactly what pieces the machine contains?  There was no user guide, and I can't find one on line.  The receipt that came with the machine is pretty vague. 

[rickrice]

Decided to download that driver, turns out it's for XP, not Vista....  Are you sure you have read this thread?

[rickrice]

Hello again - still asking, how does one tell what actual hardware is configured in the machine vs. what drivers are installed?