Wireless seem to work, but no internet connection

November 24th, 2009 · No Comments

The other day I got a used IBM Thinkpad R50e, and the first thing I did is to erase all the programs installed that I didn’t want. I know a bit about computers and of course I didn’t erase any system programs that come with the IBM, or at least I think I didn’t…

Anyway, after a reboot, I wasn’t able to connect to the internet, but:

Wireless icon was on (speed, signal and status all seemed OK)
I was able to wireless connect to a computer on my network and see it’s files
when I connected the laptop strait to the modem with a network cable, and Internet was back ON
rebooting ROUTER didn’t help
rebooting CABLE MODEM didn’t help
rebooting WINDOWS XP didn’t help

I tried all sorts of stuff via the ACCESS IBM button. There wasn’t any restore point. I tried all sort’s of stuff but none worked. Then I started to think maybe the Wireless Ethernet card DRIVER was corrupted in some way, so I tried reinstalling it, but I got a system message that said something like: “the driver that is already installed is newer then the one you’re trying to install…operation will stop.”

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So, what I decided to do, is remove the Ethernet wireless card driver and install it again, manually.

But first you need to have in hand the Driver’s setup file (SETUP.exe) location. In my IBM Thinkpad R50 it’s in:

C:\IBMTOOLS\DRIVERS\WLANCX2A

Once you locate it, you can go ahead and uninstall the driver. Also, drivers are easy to find on the internet so you can use another PC/Laptop to browse the internet and find your driver. All you need to have is the driver’s details which can be found like this:

right click My Computer and choose “Manage“
from the list click “Device Manager“
from the list that opened on the right click the + to expand the “Network Adapters” list
now right click on the WIRELESS adapter and choose “properties”
from the tabs choose “Driver” and click the “Driver Details” button
You” then see the path of the file and it’s name and below the version number. Copy those details + the network card MAKE, so you can search for the driver in various sites or the computer manufacturer site

How to uninstall the driver:

right click My Computer and choose “Manage“
from the list click “Device Manager“
from the list that opened on the right click the + to expand the “Network Adapters” list
now right click on the WIRELESS adapter and choose “properties”
from the tabs choose “Driver” and click the “uninstall” button, If you’re asked to restart, please do.