Problem with IBM ThinkPad R51 wireless

[Anthony Shaffer]

(Mistakenly posted in a Groupwise wireless forum...oops)

I'm not trying to do anything exotic like BlackBerry or anything...just a very generic setup:

--NW 5.1 and 6.5 servers with appropriate patches, clients have specified Tree/Context/Server

--Clients have appropriate DA and Scope (static) in Service Location; clients all have static IP

--Clients all run WinXP Pro w/appropriate patches

Lab with 20 desktop machines--all work great, 100% clean, no issues ever. Every user who remembers user name and pw can log in with no problems.

Cart with 20 IBM Thinkpad R51 w/integrated 802.11a/g wireless laptops has repeated, intermittent problems. Linksys WAP with extended range/stability features. WAP is in the same room as the client machines, nothing between WAP and clients, not even ceiling tile. Same software config as aforementioned desktops. During setup and testing, I had all 20 clients connected simultaneously, with zero problems, on many occasions.

During training a day or two later, hand out laptops 1 - 14, and units # 6, 8, 9 will not log in. Advanced | Tree shows no available trees. Switch out machines, and 30 minutes later, same three machines now CAN log in fine. Further testing shows that units that had no login issues previously, now have issues (6,8,9 now log in fine, but 2 and 11 do not). And so on..

One fix that generally works is to choose workstation only, let O/S find wireless network. Then go to NW login and log in. Works 70 - 80% of the time. Sometimes not so much...

Also have issues with BM38 proxy, apparently. Some of the laptops are not launching clntrust on startup (it's in the user script). Some do, and red key is showing, but still get "you are not logged in!" BM error when browser is launched. Repeated reload (force reload from origin server) will eventually bring up the site; at that point, user can browse with no issues. I only bring it up in this forum rather than a BM forum, because it *only* occurs with the wireless laptops on this subnet, not the desktops with copper connections.

This setup feels very vanilla to me, not sure why I'm having so many problems. Laptops are meant to be used by one group of 18 or so from 8 am - 9am, different group from 10 am to 11 am (for example). Very tough, 'cause we're taking lots of time just to get them connected.

Any help would be...well...helpful <grin>
Thanks,
tony

[Shivaji Samanta]

Tony,

Do you have the AEGIS Protocol (IEEE 802.1x) checked in your Wireless
Network Connection TCP/IP properties ? We have found that in some cases if
this is checked, we have had problems like wireless connections dropping
with no reason.

Shivaji
--
Shivaji Samanta
Wytheville Community College

"Anthony Shaffer" <to...@not.myrealaddress.com> wrote in message
news:YoEnf.9631$ME5....@prv-forum2.provo.novell.com...

[Anthony Shaffer]

Will check for that, thanks for the heads-up.

One thing that occured to me: when I was configuring and testing all of these machines, I had their power cords plugged in, because they were on for long periods of time. Connection was fine then. Any possibility that some "power saving" (grrrrrr...) setting is reducing power to the wireless adapter? I know that, for example, it is not *possible* to make the screen as bright on battery power as it is on AC. No matter how high you hit the brightness setting, it gets much brighter the instant you plug it in, even though I've gone into power settings and disabled all that garbage.

Many thanks again,
Tony

>>> Shivaji Samanta<som...@microshaft.com> 12/13/2005 11:34 PM >>>

[Anthony Shaffer]

Thanks! I actually did dig around in the WLAN power-saving settings, and found that it was set on "lowest." I don't guess that that's a bad option to *have*, but it surprises me that it's the default. Gonna change all of them to "highest"--assume that that will fix the problem...

>>> Shivaji Samanta<som...@microshaft.com> 12/15/2005 8:23 PM >>>
Tony,

Running on a battery should not have any effect on the wireless power unless
the WLAN adapter itself in the power-saving mode (see attached). In any
case, as you can see I have mine set to Medium and it gives me no problems
whatever. We have 75 R-52s, and I used a R-50 myself for two years before I
upgraded to a T-41, which uses the same Intel IPW2100 adapter that comes
with the Centrino package.

As for the screen brightness, if you set the power scheme to High System
Performance, you will get LCD Brightness 7, which is the same as for the
scheme using the AC adapter.

Shivaji

"Anthony Shaffer" <to...@not.myrealaddress.com> wrote in message

news:KEgof.11388$ME5....@prv-forum2.provo.novell.com...

[Anthony Shaffer]

Got them out of power-saving mode on the wireless adapter, which appears to be helping.

However, one oddity showed up on one that was still not connecting, and also on one that *was* connected: ipconfig /all shows no specified gateway. Network properties gui shows correct gateway. Gateway is 10.0.1.1; DA is 10.0.0.6. From any desktop w/copper connection, can ping 10.0.0.6 successfully. From laptops, cannot ping 10.0.0.6. *Can* ping 10.0.1.1, so they are finding the gateway just fine.

Can't figure out why: One machine shows no gateway when gateway has been specified. I deleted the gateway, then entered it again, and then ipconfig showed the proper gateway.

Also can't figure out why: I can't ping the DA. Seems to me that A) I should be able to ping the DA, and B) If I can't ping the DA, shouldn't that mean that I couldn't use the DA to authenticate? How in the heck am I logged in to a machine that can't ping the DA???

Any oddities with this adapter that I'm not finding, that are preventing my client from finding the tree?

thanks,
tony

>>> Shivaji Samanta<som...@microshaft.com> 12/15/2005 8:23 PM >>>
Tony,

Running on a battery should not have any effect on the wireless power unless
the WLAN adapter itself in the power-saving mode (see attached). In any
case, as you can see I have mine set to Medium and it gives me no problems
whatever. We have 75 R-52s, and I used a R-50 myself for two years before I
upgraded to a T-41, which uses the same Intel IPW2100 adapter that comes
with the Centrino package.

As for the screen brightness, if you set the power scheme to High System
Performance, you will get LCD Brightness 7, which is the same as for the
scheme using the AC adapter.

Shivaji

"Anthony Shaffer" <to...@not.myrealaddress.com> wrote in message
news:KEgof.11388$ME5....@prv-forum2.provo.novell.com...

[Jeff Karasik]

Anthony

I support dozens of wireless thinkpads. One thing that works for me to
resolve wireless connectivity issues with NWClient:
Open Device Mangler, Uninstall the Wireless Adapter, and then immediately
restart the machine. When the system comes back up, it re-discovers the
wireless NIC and things work fine.

My experiences seem to indicate that communications between the nic driver
and the NWClient become 'confused', and reinstalling cleans this up. It can
become confused again occassionally when a user tries to add a new wirelss
connection on the road. I typically include a cheat sheet with step by step
instructions on how to uninstall and reinstall the drivers, so that users
can try this themselves before they call our help desk.

Another thing that has occasional success is the reset the laptop's TCP/IP
stack to default, according to MS Knowledge Base article:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;299357 Essentially,
this is done opening a command window and typing: netsh int ip reset
[log_file_name]

Hope that this may help...

Jeff Karasik

[Shivaji Samanta]

Jeff,

We find that we need to occasionally zap the network adapter and let windows
find it again, but it is for all network adapters, and is not limited to the
thinkpads or wireless adapters. One caveat about the "netsh int ip reset"
thing, though - it will kill any VPN Client you may have installed. I had
to uninstall and reinstall the CISCO VPN Client on my laptop to get it to
work after running the reset procedure, and inspecting the logs shows why -
it zaps the VPN registry entries as being invalid.

--
Shivaji Samanta
Wytheville Community College

"Jeff Karasik" <jkar...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:XUepf.13259$ME5....@prv-forum2.provo.novell.com...

[Jeff Karasik]

That's good to know and makes sense. We have no VPN clients so haven't had
to deal with that consequence of re-setting TCP/IP

jsk

[Anthony Shaffer]

Thanks, I'll give that a shot!
tony

>>> Jeff Karasik<jkar...@yahoo.com> 12/18/2005 10:05 AM >>>

[Anthony Shaffer]

Thanks for the caveat. These are strictly being used inside the firewall, so it won't be an issue, but I'll put it in the notes.
tony

>>> Shivaji Samanta<som...@microshaft.com> 12/18/2005 2:07 PM >>>

[edrh...@hotmail.com]

On Sunday, December 18, 2005 10:05:27 AM UTC-5, Jeff Karasik wrote:
> Anthony
>
> I support dozens of wireless thinkpads. One thing that works for me to
> resolve wireless connectivity issues with NWClient:
> Open Device Mangler, Uninstall the Wireless Adapter, and then immediately
> restart the machine. When the system comes back up, it re-discovers the
> wireless NIC and things work fine.

OK, noob here. I have an IBM Thinkpad R51 that was working with the Verizon wireless setup fine until a couple of days ago. Now, it tries to hook up, then disconnects and looks for the connection again. It does this constantly. Other than this, the computer works fine. How would I "uninstall the Wireless Adapter" and would it find the adapter again when I rebooted?