Problems with ThinkVantage Access Manager, Wifi, and Bluetooth

Hello. When I boot up my T400 (XP Pro SP3), Access Manager tries to connect to my wireless network, which always fails. I have the correct key and everything entered, and I have no idea why it fails. It connects almost instantly after I enter the Windows wireless configuration and check "Let Windows manage wireless" or whatever it says. I have no problem letting Windows manage my wireless, in fact, I prefer it. My issues start here though:

1. Every time I reboot my laptop, Access Manager is set to manage my wireless by default, and I have to go through the same task of disabling it/allowing Windows to manage it. It is annoying and time consuming.

2. I can fix this by removing Access Manager from the startup services in msconfig, but I am unable to find a way to turn on/off Bluetooth without enabling Access Manager in services, and then rebooting. This is very inefficient and frustrating, to say the least.

Can someone tell me if there is a way I can either turn on/off Bluetooth without Access Manager, or enable Access Manager to control Bluetooth but disable control of wireless internet? Ideally, I would like Access Manager to connect to my wireless networks quickly and without error, but I suspect this is an isolated incident that would take a lot of troubleshooting to fix.

Thanks in advance!

 

To stop Access Connections from managing your wireless connections:
Try deleting the wireless profile in Access Connections that contains the info to connect to your router. Then only XP's wireless manager would have the correct info and be able to connect.

If you would like to try and get Access Connections working properly:

This is not the funnest thing to try and do, but I'm confident that if you take some time to look at it you could get Access Connections working correctly.

Using Access Connections to manage your wireless connections require that a couple different pieces of software communicate with one another. Sometimes a piece of software has to be upgraded to a newer version to get things working properly. In my case, with my 4year old X40 I could not run the newest and latest version of Access Connections, but I could run a slightly older version.

On Lenovo's support, software download page, each piece of software and drive has a readme.txt file to go with that explains to you what versions you much upgrade other pieces of software to to get things running correctly. Make sure to read this reame.txt file for each piece of software/driver you download and install from Lenovo.

The pieces of software/drivers that work together with Access Connections are:
1. The wireless card driver, usually intel.
2. Access Connections
3. Hotkey driver. This allows Fn+F5 keys on the keyboard to bringup access connections. (I think)
4. Thinkpad Power Management Driver

A common problem people have when they don't read the readme.txt files is that they download Lenovo software, double click it, and think it has installed. This is not always the case. Sometimes this just uncompresses the software and you have to find the setup.exe file and double click it to actually install the software.

Finally, and this is not well documented by Lenovo, the order in which you uninstall old programs and install the new programs matters when it comes to getting access connections to work.
Here is a good post from the Lenovo support page forums that explains the best order to

Link: http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkVa...Connection/m-p/46291/message-uid/46291#U46291

1) Uninstall the Intel Wireless Driver from Control Panel
2) Uninstall Access Connections from Control Panel
3) Restart the system
4) Download and install Hotkey driver
Link to hotkey driver
5) Download and install ThinkPad Power Management driver
Link to ThinkPad Power Management driver
6) Download and install Intel Wireless Driver
Link to Download Intel Wireless driver
Please follow these steps to install the driver
Download and extract the driver
Browse to C:\drivers\WIN\WLANINT2\XP\Apps\x32 and click on iProInst.exe to install the driver
Please note this is a critical step to fix your system
7) Download and install Access Connections

you can either install AC 5.02 or AC 4.52 from the web

Here is a link to AC 5.02 ,will be on the web by mid Sep
AC 5.02 XP

Link will stay active for 2 days

8) restart your system

Following these instructions exactly helped me get Access Connections working properly on my X40. Good luck.

 

You do not need Access Connections to turn Bluetooth on and off. I have uninstalled it, and can still use the Fn + F5 hotkey to selectively toggle WiFi and Bluetooth.

My opinion is that, unless you really need some advanced wireless network configuration feature in Access Connections, you should uninstall it - Vista's wireless management is quite capable.

 

I'm running XP (and will be until Windows 7 is officially out) and I really like the built in wireless managing in XP. I have uninstalled/disabled Access Connections and the wireless connected just fine, but my problem was with enabling Bluetooth. When I press Fn+F5 with Access Connections uninstalled/disabled, my cursor turns into the hourglass for a few seconds, but no connections window comes up. What am I doing wrong?

gmoneyphatstyle - Thanks for the info. I will try that if I am forced to use Access Manager in order to control Bluetooth.

 

I really dislike the new version of access manager. I don't know what they did to it, but it is flat out broken. I used the older version successfully with both my wired and wireless networks with out incident. I really wanted to get this version of Access Manager working, but I gave up and uninstalled it. I suggest you do the same and use the OS's network manager. My problem was that Access connection was connecting to my network automatically on reboot even when I specifically told it not to.

 

That's my exact problem.

I cannot disable Access Connections because then I am unable to enable/disable Bluetooth.

How do you turn on and off Bluetooth without using Access Connections (or FN+F5)?

 

I am really not sure, sorry. I don't know why your Access Connection program is tied to your Bluetooth turning on and off. I don't have this issue. I uninstalled Access connection and thats it. No other complications I am aware of.

 

Did you try this??

 

I finally got around to trying your suggestion (deleting the wireless profile in Access Connections) and I am glad to say it worked. Thanks for the help!

 

Booyah!
Glad to hear it