Recently bought X200 doesnt detect Wifi

Hey everyone, ive had a T400 before and when I installed Windows 7 on it. It found all the drivers right away and had no problems connecting to the internet the first time it booted. I just recently purchased an X200 Tablet from an authourized IBM reseller and the item was listed on eBay having the Intel 5100 Wifi Link card. So I opened her up and she had Vista Business 32bit installed. I made a bootable USB drive and loaded my Windows 7 ISO on that and went to town. It said it had all the drivers when it was installing but when it first signed in I noticed the Wireless Connections pop up looked different. It offered no Wireless option and now im forced to connect with the ethernet cable. I looked in the device manager and the Card isnt even detected. I took 2 screenshots to show what I mean. I cant even find the Windows 7 5100 Driver on the lenovo site as they only have the 5150 and 5350 drivers on there. I tried installing the 5150 drive and it did nothing. I even tried installing the 5100 driver and still nothing. Someone please tell me whats going on. Did I just get screwed and bought a laptop with no WiFi card?

 

Is the WiFi card turned on?

 

This.

The switch can be tricky to find and easy to forget.

 

Would no power to the device cause it to show up as an unknown device in device manager?

 

Yes it is turned on. I forgot to mention that. When I turn it off, the Bluetooth devices vanish from the list.

 

Found the culprit. How could this have happened. I phoned the seller, they're sending me a new 5100. Uggh now I have to wait for them to ship this out from NJ and wait another week. Look at the antennae wires tho, they look like they're factory sealed. Could this have been a Lenovo mix up?

 

LOL

/facepalm

 

Does your machine have a Centrino sticker on the palmrest? I ask because you only get one of these if you have an Intel CPU, Chipset, AND Wi-Fi card. If you have this sticker, you should have had a card.

Conversely, if you have a Core 2 Duo or similar sticker then the mix up would lie with the reseller and not with Lenovo (as a 5100 should not have been included). However, it's still odd for any system to be shipped without some kind of Wi-Fi card.

 

Well that was weird. Good thing you opened it up because that would have been a horrible issue to troubleshoot (since you'd never figure it out ).

 

Hey its not their fault, not everyone uses wifi these days :facepalm:

 

Yep it says Centrino 2 vPro. Sellers sending me a replacement 5100 in the mail and i asked if he could send a 5300 just for fun haha. Im using some D-Link Wireless G USB dongle for now. The kids in school are going to think I have some 90's machine that needs a Wifi Dongle *sigh*

 

If that's the case then it sounds like the mistake was on the manufacturing side. Either that, or someone cracked open the machine and removed the Wi-Fi card before reselling it.

In the future, if you want to upgrade to a 5300 I have found that this one works well and is inexpensive.

 

I think someone cracked it open. I don't know why they would. It seems to be unlikely that a missing component would slip through the manufacturing process.

While I'm not familiar with Lenovo's manufacturing process, I am familiar with Dell's. A mistake like this would have to slip through not one, not two, not three, but four different checkpoints to get to a reseller in this state.

I would venture to say Lenovo's quality controls would similiarly prevent such a grave mistake.