New T41 with wireless issues, any ideas?

so, after reading many posts here, and other forums i picked up a new t41 to replace my a20m.

I got the 802.11 a/b/g card, with internal antennas.

I have two problews with it currently. First, it takes quite a long time to associate with the access points I have, a B and a G.

Secondly, for example when connected to the B AP, when I am five feet away from it, the Wireless Connection Status shows me 54% signal. This is FIVE feet away. There are not other 2.4 G devices in the room either.

Further away, worse signal. My A20m, with a internal crappy 3com card, gets 80% throughout my house, outside, etc.

Are there ways to increase performance? I have updated all the drivers relevant to this issue, but it didn't really change much. As well, the throughput seems VERY poor.

the G does not work much better. And, getting a connection is hit or miss. I think this Access Connections software is a good idea, but not fully baked yet. Can one turn it off completly and just use the MSFT software for this?

the second issue is, that the cards continue to transmit some type of data, ALL the time. Every second 2-5 packets of data are sent, meaning the little computer icon in the task bar is always lit. all my other computers, send, receive and then shut down till another query is made.

anyone have any thoughts about what THIS could be?

I have not yet contact IBM, but will soon if I cannot find any answers.

thanks for the thoughts
Great forum!!!

 

I came across this same issue with "phantom" wireless traffic in WinXP on my T41p's a/b/g card. Packet capture programs don't show any true traffic, unless I actually generate it, but the windows icon does show the activity. The counter shows approximately thirty packets sent every few minutes, usually in blocks of five packets per second for a short while. Has anyone else seen this behavior? I'm using the most recent drivers from the T41p driver matrix...brand spankin' new. This happened with the previous driver version as well. If I disable the Wireless Zero Configuration service, the traffic stops, but then the Workstation service takes forever to start on boot. In addition, other laptops I've used with the same Windows configuration don't have this traffic, so I don't believe it to be an OS issue.

Any information regarding this would be most appreciated.