X220 3G mobile broadband problem with F5521gw

[veriton]

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790 wrote:

Personally i think there is some thermal/packaging issue, we have noted that laptop fans tend to wind up quite allot just before problems. Does this ring any bells?

Toshiba have been trying there best on this one, and we are just in the process of feeding back our findings with the new setup command switch. Has that command helped?

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I can't say I've noticed a link with thermal issues. I was using my X220 for 1-1.5 years without any problems - they seemed to start after some software updates in mid-2012.

I'm pretty sure it's when I bring the laptop out of hibernation. Note I have recently unticked the "allow computer to power down" option on the F5521gw driver - not sure if this has helped yet (need to do some more thorough tests).

[790]

Thanks for the info. For us all power management is off on the device and it hasn't helped. Well still plugging away

[Borkar]

Hi,

I doubt that it is a thermal problem because I can totally bypass the connection drops by permanently pinging e.g. google.com in the windows console. If I do not ping anything (and it seems that it may happen if and only if the WWAN module is idle), the connection drop may occur. I cannot recall any situation that the connection dropped during the download of a large file.

My SIM card is a "ProSieben SIM" (Vodafone). I am located in Germany.

Note that, unfortunately, I have not tried the driver installation using the flag that you have posted yet.

Best,

Martin

[veriton]

In case it helps others, this problem with the WWAN 3G card still exists but I've bought a handy, cheap utility (http://safelyremove.com/) which allows me to pin the F5521gw to its notification menu and stop/restart it very easily. I assume this is the same as going into Device Manager but much more convenient if you're in a hurry (you don't need to enter escalated privileges etc). I've been trying this for a few weeks and it works well - takes about 15-30s for the 3G to come up.

BTW I assume other such device managers are available and I have no relationship to Safely Remove (other than being a customer).

I have decided not to try all Lenovo support's nonsense of reinstalling Windows or sending off my X220 to get its motherboard replaced - I can only see risk and wasted time in that approach. I am still very annoyed with Lenovo for not wanting to diagnose the root cause.

[frippi]

So, recentyl I purchased hs2340 which is basically same card, just HP branded. And of course I'm suffering from the same issue. In Windows 8 there is built in broadband support, so it displays cellular network name it's currently in range of. Whenever I power on my PC or wake it from sleep - everything is fine. But after some time card just loses network and instead of network name I see "No signal" there. The funny thing is that it happens with newest HP drivers (feb 13 I think) and firmware updated.

But I think I've found something that wasn't discovered yet. All modems support AT commands, and there is special subset of commands for cellular modems, to cut it short AT command AT+CFUN allows one to control power state and radios of a modem. The description for that command is available here: http://natisbad.org/E4300/Dell_Wireless_5530_AT_cmd_ref.html#ATplusCFUN.

Anyways, the syntax is:

AT+CFUN=x,y

where x can be: 0 - to turn card off, 1 - turn it on, 4 - turn off radios (flight mode), 5 - turn on GSM only mode, 6 - turn on WCDMA only mode.

y - 0 to switch mode normally, 1 - to switch mode and reboot device.

As one may guess, normal state is AT+CFUN=1 and it stays the same even when my card loses signal. So, the solution, at least for me, is to run two commands: AT+CFUN=4 and AT+CFUN=1 shortly after. That seems to resolve whatever gets broken in card and it can find network again. But combinatin may be different, so try them out.

Now on where to input these commands. In device manager you can find a number of COM ports assigned to your device that have "Device management" in their name. Make sure to select "Show hidden devices" in "View" menu, I have two such COM ports and only hidden one seems to work for me, So try them out.

Anyways, once you've identified your port you can issue these commands with some terminal tool (putty, hyper terminal...) or even usual command prompt. With latter you can simply type (for COM4):

echo AT+CFUN=4 > com4

in command prompt.

Hope this will help someone else still struggling with these cards in 2013...

[Borkar]

I would like to draw your attention to driver 7.2.5.4,

http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/downloads/detail.page?DocID=DS029034

I have not tested it yet. However, the changelog unfortunately does not mention a fix for our problem...

Version 7.2.5.4/7.1.2.0  (G1WO11WW)

• (New) Added support for ThinkPad Helix,X1 Helix,X1 Helix 3G.
• (Fix) Fixed a security vulnerability issue.

Version 7.2.3.2/7.1.2.0  (G1WO10WW)

• (Fix) Fixed an issue in which Access Connections 3G Tethering showed an error message when Mobile Hotspot was started.

I doubt it is a solution. But let's see...

Best regards.

Martin

[Puppy]

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Borkar wrote:
I have not tested it yet. However, the changelog unfortunately does not mention a fix for our problem...

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Lenovo have never acknowledged this bug in the driver or firmware so there is "nothing" to fix.

[Puppy · Accepted solution]

 I think I found solution that really works.

The disconnecting/reconnection issue has been discussed here for several months, confirmed by several customers (mostly in Europe region) without any solution. Good news is that I (hope) I finally found the solution. It is power management related issue. One of recent messages (posted by '790' 03-08-2013 06:13 PM) about Toshiba support advice with a driver installed command-line switch brought some light. I started to read about selective suspend feature of kernel drivers. Basically the idea is that the driver forces a network device to a low-power state when there is no traffic. The Ericsson driver also supports this feature but it seems to be broken. Since I don't have any documentation of the driver I started a try-and-fail approach modifying a driver related registry values that looks related ... and found one

My system configuration is:

X220

BIOS 1.38

Windows 7 x64 SP1

Ericsson F5521gw driver version 6.5.15

Ericsson F5521gw firmware R3B01

- I use Windows power manager and 'Balanced' schema. In advanced power profile settings I have:

   Wireless Adapter Settings

   + Power Saving Mode

      + On Battery: Maximum Performance

      + Plugged in: Maximum Performance

- In Device manager, Network adapters -> F5521gw Mobile Broadband Driver -> Properties, Power management tab I have:

  [X ] Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power

  [ ] Allow the device to wake the computer

Note that following registry values modification might cause damage to your system and data loss, you are doing it at your own risk !  I would strongly recommend to do backup of your data, check that you have created Windows recovery media and create restore point before continue.

The steps:

1. Run regedit.exe as an administrator

2. Locate 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{36FC9E60-C465-11CF-8056-444553540000}' key

3. There will be several subkeys (on the left pane) named '0001', '0002' etc. You have to go through all of them and locate one that have value (on the right pane) name 'DriverDesc' and value 'F5521gw Mobile Broadband Device'. It should also contain value named 'EnableCR3840'

4. Locate value named 'EnableSelectiveSuspend' (on the right pane), it is supposed to have actual value 1

5. Change it to 0 (zero)

6. Close regedit

7. Restart the machine

After the registry value modification, the connection stays for 15+ hours a day (tested for 7 days yet) even without the continuous ping trick (before that, the connection had always dropped within few hours). Transition from 3G to 2G and back also works without a connection drop. The registry value modification might have the same impact as the driver setup command-line parameter posted by '790' but I have not tried that since the information was related to Toshiba OEM driver.

Another user of this forum has also confirmed it has made noticeable improvement for him. He uses newer version of the F5521gw driver 7.x for X230. So it seems to work for both 6.x and 7.x driver version.

Hope it helps.

Message to Lenovo support staff: Could you please verify this workaround and possibly provide official fix for the issue ?

[A1X]

I confirm that it really works on my T420s/F5521gw (driver version 7.2.3.0), I have tested it with this registry modification for the entire week-end, once connected stayed connected. Great find Puppy!

[mark23]

Hi!

I changed back to one of my Ericsson F5521gw MBM last Sunday, tested the MBM troughout the week with the registry hack applied and was going to write that Puppy's find was in fact the solution when my WWAN connection chrashed today. I do not know the reason, however, the behaviour looked all to familiar. Plus, I have not been able to (re-)connect since it crashed this morning! I was only able to connect to the WWAN after completely removing the driver and reinstalling it. Now I am back online.

EDIT: Looks like I was a victim of a Telekom (T-D1) network failure this morning (reference), so I will keep testing my connection now with the registry hack applied.

BTW, I had to look for the HP-name for the "Ericsson F5521gw Mobile Broadband device" which is "HP hs2340 HSPA+ Mobild Broadband Module USB Device". On my HP Elitebbok 8560p there several registry keys which contain both the CR3840 and 'EnableSelectiveSuspend' values ... Why is only the '[...]{36FC9E60-C465-11CF-8056-444553540000}' key relevant? What about the other keys?

Thanks!

Cheers,

Lars