T430 Wifi Defective

Hi guys,

I got my first Thinkpad two days ago, a T430 with the Intel Ultimate-N 6300. When returning from sleep, the wifi card will not be recognized. Windows shows no wireless connections available and device manager does not even list the card.

After troubleshooting, I have found that this only occurs when AC is plugged in. I cannot replicate it on battery. Disabling wifi power management, device sleep, and pcie power savings has no impact. In addition, using HWInfo, I found that the entire pcie system bus that the wifi card is connect to disappears after returning from sleep. Has anyone ever had a similar issue?

I have contacted support and they are issuing an exchange; if someone could give me some insight on the process that would also be great. Previously, I had a Latitude E6410 that had a defective NVS 3100m. I called the day I received it (11PM at night) and they overnighted me a new system that I got the next day. If I understand correctly, Lenovo wants 5 business days to just process the request, then they build it and ship it, potentially taking weeks of time. I leave for college in 4 days...I'm going to guess already it won't be available before then.

If it matters, I have the i7, Optimus, and Bluetooth on this system. Also, one last note: there is a horridly strong plastic smell from the computer. Its not a burning plastic smell but sort of a "new" smell, but it is so strong it fills the hallway of my house and doesn't seem to be subsiding. I have searched both of these problems and haven't found much clear information, so thanks in advance!

 

Have you tried uninstalling the WiFi driver via Device Manager and then installing the driver direct from Intel for the 6300 (install driver-only, without the other Intel software)? I'm hesitant to say this is a hardware issue, as it works fine for you on battery.

The plastic smell is normal for many new computers, and definitely is present on new Thinkpads. Personally I don't mind it at all (it's like a new car smell, in a way), but it'll mostly dissipate within a week or so. You can speed that up by placing the laptop in a well-ventilated area.

 

Thanks for your response. I have uninstalling the driver and using only the intel driver, but it hasn't made a difference. Also, I did a factory restore and put the computer to sleep during the select wireless network page in Win 7 OOBE and it replicated the same thing. I'm thinking it might not be a wifi card issue now but a PCIe bus issue as the entire interface disappears...but I have never heard of anything similar happening before.

Thats good to know, I was just wondering as none of my other systems have ever had such a strong smell.

 

I have been having the exact same wifi issue (I have the 6300). Reinstalling the intel driver seemed to work for a while, but now it is back to not recognizing the wifi card after resuming from sleep. And when it does see the card, it fails to automatically connect to my network, even though I checked the remember and automatically connect to this network option. Any advice/help?

Thanks!

 

So it may be I am not the only one with the problem. In your situation, can you replicate the problem on both AC and battery? Otherwise I think the only other option is to try to disable power saving on the wifi card and allowing the wifi card to sleep in device manager, but those have not worked for me.

Do you happen to have another intel wireless card (non-6300)? I will trying putting my 6200 from my Dell in it, but I'm not sure it will work as it may not have the Lenovo FRU. There have been problems reported about the 6300 on other systems (especially W520) so I would not really be surprised if its a 6300 only problem.

 

I mostly use the battery, but I think the problem occurred once or twice on AC last week. I have tried enabling and disabling power savings to the wifi card and under both situations it becomes problematic. I don't have any other wifi cards.

 

So the 6200 didn't work, and the PCI bus still disappears after removing the wifi card and going to sleep. I also tried a clean Windows install with drivers only and no Lenovo software, same problem. I think its a hardware issue, but not sure how widespread and how long replacement will take.

 

What about placing the wifi card in the open slot? (I think it's the msata slot, and I don't have an msata drive.) Is it an issue with the combination of parts we chose? It seems like we have similar configurations with the i7, optimus, bluetooth, and 6300. Do you know if anyone has tried support/warranty?

 

I have this problem as well on my new system, the wireless interface disappears entirely. But it's always fine after a reboot. I can't imagine this is a hardware issue given that it only happens under those precise circumstances. I'm going to install Windows 8 soon, I'll let you know if they problem occurs there as well. I'll try the latest stable Ubuntu as well.

 

I should be getting a warranty replacement in about 2 weeks, so I will see how that goes when it happens. I'll try moving the into the open slot too and see if that works. Hardware support was useless and software support couldn't help since the problem happened the second I took it out of the box, but you should try anyway just to get a replacement order in place (they only give replacements if you find the problem after a few days, otherwise you have to go depot repair which is worse).

Autumn Corvus: Testing on Win 8 and Ubuntu seems like a great idea, please let us know how it goes. I will probably also try Win 8 too and see how it works. On mine, somehow I can't get the interface to even come back with a "restart" in Windows. I have to do shutdown and then power back up for it to reappear.

 

Problem reproduced in Windows 8 Pro x64 RTM, though it took like 8 tries to get it.

It doesn't seem like anyone in the owners thread has this problem even though plenty of them have the 6300.

 

Are you getting a new logicboard or a new wifi card? If the whole bus disappears after system resume, I would think it's a problem with the logicboard, but I am not sure. However, since it works after a shut down and power up, I am thinking its a software issue, possibly the bios?

 

HI,

I've got the same exact issue. I7, Intel Ultimate-N 6300, bluetooth, Intel HD Graphics 4000. Wireless card completely disappears after about one hour of usage, AC plugged in (not tested on battery only though). Once the card disappears, it's gone regardless of whatever drivers or OS loaded. Tested on Windows 7, and Wifi didn't show up at all on Linux as well. Rebooting, shutting, down, removing batter, all do not solve the problem. Did a factory restore and updated the bios, still no use. Only after a while of being inactive (maybe an hour with the laptop on sleep/switched off or something), it goes back to work as if everything ok. And then repeats the problem again after a while.

This seems like a global defect in T430 models. I sent mine to a lenovo service point and should get a call within the next 2 days, hopefully!

 

I should be getting a completely new system built from the factory, so all the parts will be new.

So it seems to have something to do with i7, 6300, and bluetooth as i'm guessing we all have that in common. BIOS updated here to with no change. I'm still wondering how the machine has been out for ~2 months and so far only about 4 reports of the issue, i hope its not a global issue.

 

Do you know if we can keep our current systems until we receive a new system, as in your case changt34x?

 

You should be able to keep the system until the new one arrives. I'm not totally sure about how their exchange works (definitely much slower than Dell's SMB) but I think they ship you a label for return with the new system so you return it then.

 

Well mine was completely new from the factory.. This is very frustrating!

 

Mine was also completely new, and it is impossible to find the scope of the problem because not everyone is on these forums- but my guess is that there are more people with this problem. It's just so strange that the wifi works fine after a reboot, but then stops after a resume from sleep, which really makes me think this is a software/bios issue or a compatibility issue with some configurations.

 

I got my T430 last week and I am having the exact same problem the the Intel 6300.
If I put it to sleep for an extend period of time, the wifi will be missing from device manager upon awaking.
Reboot will not bring it back, the only way is to do a complete shutdown and reboot.

 

Strangely, checking "allow this computer to turn off this device to save power" actually seems to fix the problem, at least for now. This makes me certain that it's not a hardware issue, unless there are poor solder joints which could be a problem.

 

Tried that, doesn't fix it. And again, I tried on Windows 7, and on Ubuntu 12.04, same issue existed. Maybe Bios problem, but an update to bios did not fix it as well.

 

You're right. I seemed to fix it on battery, and just now tested it on AC. On AC the problem came back. I am puzzled as to why this problem exists and why there is no clear solution by now. I would rather not wait to have a new system shipped out to me. I was thinking of putting in an old wifi card, but if the whole PCIe bus disappears after resume, the problem must be with either the logicboard or the software.

 

This is very true, waiting 2 weeks for it to arrive at first place was too damn long time for me, and then I send it back just the next day. And now who knows how long I have to wait again

 

Same here, I tried that on the first day and it turned into an AC only problem. It seems that we all share similar configurations built sometime between probably 8/5-8/18 that have the problem, so it may be something with this batch. Seems like it could be fixed with a BIOS update that changes something with S3 suspend.

Have you requested an RMA yet? I hope someone with some experience can tell me how it works. As of right now, it seems like I will be without a working T430 for 3 weeks total (requested last week, still no news yet).

One more question for everyone: what is your model? I have a 2342CTO (number under battery).

 

I also have a 2342CTO

 

Our institution just purchased 1500 T430 machines also with 6300-N cards (machine type 2347), currently running Win 7 Ultimate 32-bit. I'm here to tell you, you are not alone in experiencing this issue.

Of the 70 or so we have distributed, I've received six complaints of randomly disappearing wireless cards coming out of standby or cold boot.

Fixes we have attempted are as follows:

Replacing the card with another known working 6300-N card
Updating to the latest wifi driver (Version <15.02.0000.1258/15.02.0000> released 8/13 which according to Lenovo "Fixed an issue that might have wireless disconnection.")
Updating to the latest BIOS (shipped with 1.16 --> 1.19)
Disabling power management on the wireless card

So far none of the above has conclusively fixed the problem, although we are still testing the BIOS update. The difficulty has been that this is an intermittent issue that is currently only affecting a small number of machines. Cards that are vanishing on one machine can be swapped out and placed into another and function without issue. Machine can go in and out of standby and reconnect to wireless successfully repeatedly only to fail again a few hours later.

On a few occasions, the card does show in Device Manager with an ! indicating that there is a conflict (although of course it will not explain the conflict as the card is not working). The error reports: "This device cannot find enough free resources it can use. Code 12."

My coworker discovered that by disabling that 2nd PCI Express Port in Device Manager that is in reported memory conflict with the wifi card (see below attached image) he can force the card to instantly come back every time. So far, this has been the only permanent fix we have discovered, and suggests a chipset driver update may correct the problem by changing the memory address location.

We are currently pursuing the matter with Lenovo. If there are other suggestions or solutions people have, they would be welcome.

 

Do you know how I could disable the second PCIe port? And does that mean that if I want to add a msata drive in the future that I would not be able to do so?

 

Go to Control Panel --> Device Manager --> System Devices. Right-click on the 'Intel(R) Series 7....Root Port 2" and choose disable.

I'm unaware of any necessity of an mSATA drive to use this port.

 

That didn't solve the problem for me, even after restarting, but thanks for the help. Could you please keep us updated on what lenovo says? I will also try calling lenovo support tomorrow. My temporary fix is to use a usb wifi adapter.

 

Yes please keep us updated. I'll also check for any updates with them tomorrow as well and keep you posted.

 

Can you go to System Information, Hardware Resources, Conflict / Sharing and see if your wireless card is sharing a memory address with that port?

 

My wireless card isn't recognized by the system right now, but there is something about the PCI bus there.

 

Ok. The next time it is recognized by your system, if you could pop in and share the port number it is using, that would be great. Again, with so few "problem" systems to play with, I'm looking for any and all data to try and troubleshoot.

 

I managed to get it recognized again by a system reboot. I hope this can be of use.

 

Im having the same problem. If I call for a replacement will I be without a laptop for a month????

 

Mine is 2344CTO

 

I called support and they suggested that I re-install windows. If that doesn't work they will send me a new wifi card, although I think the problem is with the PCIe bus.

 

Honestly, given that this has been established to be operating system independent in this thread (pre-load install Win 7 Ultimate 32-bit, Win 7 64 bit clean install, Windows 8 RTM, Ubuntu) I don't see how it is possible to be anything other than hardware related. Best case is that is is a BIOS problem. Worst case is a motherboard issue.

Lenovo is escalating our complaint to Level 2 (apparently they had not heard of the issue until now) and we will be sending in machines for testing. I'll keep you posted.

 

Re-installing didn't work. Hopefully I can get a motherboard replacement.

 

Disabling Wake On LAN in the bios fix the problem for me so far.
I have 2342CTO, every try it and report back please.

 

I just tried it but after 4 sleeps I still get the same problem. It was a good suggestion though.

 

I called, and will be getting a new motherboard and wifi card next week. Hopefully this will fix the problem. (I also spent an hour on the phone with them updating every related driver and the bios, so it's not a software issue as far as I can tell)

 

Just wondering, are they allowing you to change the part yourself or are you sending it to depot repair? If they can let you change it, I might switch my support request to that as it seems it would be MUCH faster than system exchange.

 

Onsite warranty repair, they will send a technician out to fix it. If it is a wifi card problem, the wireless card is a cru (customer replaceable unit) which you can replace yourself. If it is a motherboard problem, I think you need to send it in (unless you have Onsite).

 

The problem is back!
It seem to only happen if I let it sleep overnight.

 

I've actually just returned the unit (they said no restocking fee, but that remains to be seen) as support denied my replacement request on Friday (wonder why they didn't tell me when I called on Monday) and I had already waited 5+ business days with no report. They just kept saying we will contact you in 3-5 days every single time I called with no contact, and now they want 3-5 days for a senior tech to call, 3-5 days after to set up onsite, then however long it takes to fix it. I might have been spoiled by Dell's much better support (compared to Lenovo) but at this rate nothing was ever going to be done.

If you can, please continue posting any new occurrences, as I would still be interested in owning a ThinkPad without all of these problems.

 

Problem such as this usually get resolved with bios upgrade.
For those of you have got Wifi or Motherbard replaced, please post your result.

 

Just got a confirmation that they're going to install a new motherboard. And it should be ready by next week. I'll keep you posted.

 

Any updates?

 

Currently we are at 16 machines out of 200 distributed now reporting this issue.

Lenovo Level 2 tech support can confirm after a day of testing that is NOT a software issue, and on the hardware side has ruled out the wireless card. They continue to work the problem, and may send our test unit to the engineering team in Japan as needed. They commented that it is similar to an issue seen a few years ago, where the 3G card (if purchased) would behave similarly. That was on the USB root hub, and this is the PCI Express, however, and that ended up being fixed through a Microsoft update.