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ThinkPad T60 Wireless Keeps Powering Off

by Frank Kim on Oct.31, 2006, under Miscellaneous

One day I noticed my wireless kept powering off after five minutes. I am not sure why but I opened ThinkVantage Access Connections (Fn + F5), went to Configure > Global Connections and turned off “Enable automatic wireless LAN radio control”. That seemed to fix the problem.

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29 Comments for this entry

  • metin s
    November 14th, 2006 on 8:36 AM

    Thanks for the fix…

    IBM does employ idiots…

  • Kevin Closson
    December 30th, 2006 on 12:57 PM

    I just migrated over from my T40 to my T60 and this was happening to me. The solution provided here worked. Thanks.

    T60s aren’t really IBM, BTW, it’s Lenovo.

    What do I know, I just blog about Oracle stuff…

    Thanks

  • Raymond
    January 28th, 2007 on 3:42 AM

    Hey, check out your wireless master switch which is located at the side of your laptop. It may be switched off.

  • Nancy
    May 15th, 2007 on 12:59 AM

    I’ve had my T60 for a year, but I’d just been using windows wireless config. Then I did something with the ThinkVantage controller yesterday, and it took over, and started randomly powering off. A Google search for “thinkvantage keeps powering off my wireless” puts you at the top of the list – well-deserved! Thanks.

  • Dave
    July 18th, 2007 on 8:43 AM

    Hey, thanks Raymond! I never noticed that button on the T60p. I don’t ever remember having one on by T42 or T20. I was getting to my wits end trying to figure out why the wireless just decided to stop working.

  • David
    August 2nd, 2007 on 10:50 AM

    Hey thanks, Frank. This was driving me crazy, and your fix did the trick. What a bunch of knuckleheads.

  • james
    August 26th, 2007 on 9:44 PM

    thanks for this. very useful and solved the problem. interestingly, from my experience this bug doesn’t happen with WEP, only with WPA and its variants.

  • Shirish
    October 9th, 2007 on 1:37 PM

    Appreciate your tip. Seems to have worked. Thx.

  • Danielle
    November 18th, 2007 on 8:52 AM

    Seems to be working for my R52 as well. THANK YOU!

  • Oj C
    November 19th, 2007 on 7:51 AM

    Thanks, great advice :) Well.. so far so good lol

  • Anil R
    November 20th, 2007 on 11:29 PM

    This is actually an issue with the Power Management Driver and the Wireless Card Driver. I once called IBM about this and they had me go to their support site and search weird search terms and specifically install the drivers found from there. I asked them if system update won’t fix it.

    He told me it won’t since System Update doesn’t update the right drivers. If anything, after fixing this, if you do System Update, it’ll probably spoil it again.

    Kevin, by the way, the thinkpads have always been Lenovo.. They’re the ones who manufactured them even when IBM owned the company. As to the software, I believe IBM still does it.

  • Ravi C
    November 29th, 2007 on 12:20 PM

    This solution rocks. Saved lot of agony for me. Thanks a lot.

  • Andy
    December 27th, 2007 on 6:19 PM

    Worked great! THANK YOU!

    Pesky control — I wonder why it was working for so many months and then switched on with no intervention? Oh well, why ask why? LOL…

  • M Ravi
    January 24th, 2008 on 5:51 AM

    This worked, thanks for helping me out. However, i could not figure out where the switch is – that Raymond is referring to. Which is the switch and how does it look like?
    thanks
    Ravi.

  • Hector
    February 17th, 2008 on 4:00 AM

    Yes, Raymond… come back, please…. I can’t find the switch either and keep getting the msg that I need to use the HW switch to turn my wireless on….

  • Marshall
    February 17th, 2008 on 6:00 AM

    Using this worked for me…
    “C:\Program Files\ThinkPad\ConnectUtilities\KillAC.exe”
    It kills the program that keeps shutting off the wireless.
    In fact i put a shortcut to it in my startup…

  • Frank Kim
    February 17th, 2008 on 7:57 AM

    Hi M Ravi,
    Did you find the switch that turns the wireless on or off? It is on the front left of the laptop. It’s kind of hard to see since it’s also black.
    This blog article,
    http://lenovoblogs.com/designmatters/?p=141, has a picture of it, http://farm1.static.flickr.com/157/400034817_dfa33b76db_o.jpg.
    -Frank

  • M Ravi
    February 17th, 2008 on 9:21 AM

    No I could not locate the switch
    Thanks
    Ravi.

  • doremon
    February 25th, 2008 on 1:43 PM

    yeah you’re the man! it worked. i was worried why is that happening. i’ve been waiting for the correct ’system update’ but still it wasn’t working.

    the wierd thing bout my wireless is it used to be normal, just couple days ago it started.

    thx anyway.

  • Doc Miller
    March 5th, 2008 on 11:13 PM

    Also, check the properties of your wireless connection and ensure that the box titled “Wireless Intermediate Drive” is ticked. I am unsure how but mine was unchecked and so the radio would not respond.

  • Shamik
    March 23rd, 2008 on 10:07 PM

    Hi there. I was able to fix it, thanks to this thread. I was unable to get Fn F5 to get me the control that was mentioned at the top of this page. But someone mentioned KILLac.exe. I had it on my laptop, just not in the location mentioned. I did a search for it from Control Panel. From the results, I asked it to open the folder (right click for this option). I saw a setup.exe file, so I double clicked. It brought up a utility, and I asked it to “Repair” something. That seems to have worked – So far! If it doesn’t, I’ll update this blog. THANK YOU!

  • anton
    July 16th, 2008 on 6:27 PM

    thanks man, you saved me a lot time setting my ibm t60p, it kept turning off the wireless every few minutes without any visible reason

  • Cardinal Bass
    September 25th, 2008 on 10:43 AM

    Tank God I found this thread. I was about to send it in for a new motherboard. YOU DA MAN!

  • Vamsi
    December 3rd, 2008 on 5:49 AM

    phew!!! this really works…(turned off ‘Enable automatic wireless LAN radio control.’) Thanks a ton Frank!!

  • Serena
    December 26th, 2008 on 4:49 PM

    Thank you so much, Frank! That was driving me nuts!

  • Sola
    March 27th, 2010 on 4:23 PM

    Thanks so much! Retyping my wireless password every 5 seconds was DEFINITELY getting annoying!

  • Austin Consult
    April 9th, 2010 on 9:48 PM

    Great Solution! THANKS!!!
    Fn5 on T61 brought up different window. I found the correct window under ThinkVantage Button/ThinkVantage Technologies/Access Connections/ … then the third drop down menu ‘configure’ has the above mentioned ‘global settings’

  • ROAR
    May 25th, 2010 on 11:21 PM

    Thanks, it worked for mine!
    Lifesaver!

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