X220 wireless fails after sleep

EDIT (2013/01/26): Updating BIOS to 1.37 fixed the problem

Hello all,

I've been experiencing an odd problem with the Intel 6205 wireless card in my X220. After the computer sleeps for a long period of time, upon waking the wireless card fails to recognize or connect to any networks. Once this happens, the only way to restore connectivity is to restart the machine. This only happens when the computer sleeps for a significant length of time (i.e. longer than an hour). I've noticed that during these instances, the power button no longer blinks green as it normally does when in sleep mode. I don't know whether there's some relationship between these behaviors.

I've installed the latest drivers (14.1.1.3) and I've unsuccessfully tried the Device Manager trick mentioned in the second post of this thread. Does anybody know anything else I can try? I have a SSD so rebooting is not too painful of a process, but right now this wireless problem is my major frustration with the X220.

 

Try pressing Fn + F5 to shut off the wireless radio (wireless icon should turn off), then turn the wireless radio back on (with Fn + F5).

 

None of the Fn + F[#] hotkeys seem to work at all when in this state.

Toggling the physical wireless switch does nothing as well.

 

AFAIK, you need the Lenovo WiFi drivers and the Hotkey Features driver for this to work.

Which BIOS version do you have? I upgraded from my original 1.04 BIOS to 1.16 to fix some suspend issues. Also check that you have all the Windows 7 Update modules installed.

Drivers and software - ThinkPad X220, X220 Tablet, X220i, X220i Tablet

 

I'm on BIOS 1.19. The hotkeys work fine normally; it's only after a long sleep that they don't respond.

 

I've had the same issue, but I haven't had it for awhile.

I can't remember if it was 1.19 or me switching the wireless drivers.

 

What wireless drivers did you use? The intel ones provided on the lenovo site? or did you download them from intel directly? This is driving me nuts.. no other laptop I've had has had this issue.. yet on my x220t I need to spend 5 or so minutes fiddling with wireless at each new location (or just resuming from sleep at the same location) just to get it to connect..

 

Hey there, I was the one who recently responded to your similar thread on the Lenovo boards. Originally I used the Lenovo drivers, but I recently installed the drivers directly from Intel with no change in behavior.

I'm really curious about this "deep sleep" state that the X220 seems to enter after a prolonged period of time. When in this state, there are no indications of life at all - the power button doesn't blink and the wireless indicator light is also dark. Anyone know anything about this?

 

Did you check your power settings? Sometimes it will shutoff your WLAN after prolonged periods of non-use or have issues after it wakes up.

 

Which settings are you referring to? The only ones I can find relevant to wireless connectivity are in the advanced settings for power plans ("Wireless Adapter Settings"), but these don't have anything to do with shutting off the card due to inactivity.

FWIW, I've already disabled the option to allow the computer to turn off the wireless card to save power in Device Manager.

 

I've had this exact problem in my X220. On the original factory install the issue was it took 15+ sec to reconnect after coming out of standby. Fixed it by updating all drivers manually (not System Update) in the correct order. That effectively fixed the problem, it'd reconnect within ~5sec.

Then out of the blue the wireless issue appeared again, and with a vengeance. It wouldn't reconnect at all out of standby and I'd have to restart the machine to fix it. As is the case with Windows, something broke for no reason and restoring the machine to a backup made earlier fixed the issue.

Cliffs: reinstall Windows off the factory restore discs or preload image, and update the drivers in the order given below.

Windows 7 Clean Installation - ThinkPad T420, T420s, T520, W520, X220 and X220 Tablet

 

Hi all,

I have found a solution to this problem. The culprit was the pagefile - I had adjusted it to a custom size to save space (since I have a SSD), and apparently that was having unintended effects on sleep behavior. Once I reverted the pagefile back to "System managed size", all my sleep woes disappeared. To be clear, not only is wireless now working fine after waking from sleep, but the computer also no longer enters the anomalous deep sleep mode described in my original post.

In retrospect, this makes perfect sense since the two or three other people I've heard about with this problem all have SSDs and likely all made similar tweaks to their pagefile settings.

If you don't know, In Windows 7 pagefile settings are accessible at Control Panel > System and Security > System > Advanced system settings > Advanced > Performance > Settings > Advanced > Virtual memory > Change

 

Glad to hear you found a solution. I have a traditional HD and have not messed with the page file size, and I'm also having this issue. Trying to figure out what is going currently, and I might switch back to an older BIOS.

 

Actually, it's returned...everything was peachy for the first few days after I reverted the pagefile settings, then the same issue started cropping up. Unfortunately, it only happens during long sleeps, so testing new solutions takes a while. I'm tempted to nuke and pave, but I've invested so much effort in tweaking the OS that it would have to be the last resort.

 

Also experiencing this on my brand new x220 with SSD. Did all the recommended things and the only way to re-enable wifi after resuming from sleep is to restart the computer. I have noticed that the computer won't go back into sleep either when this happens. All the function keys do not work also. Have you found a way to fix it?

 

This issue has been bothering me since I installed Windows 8 Consumer Preview on my X220 Tablet. Any kind of sleep, deep or otherwise, would put the wireless adapter in a state that it won't connect properly to any wireless network. It would show "connection is limited". I noticed this started after I installed virtualbox.
I installed Lenovo hotkey and wireless driver (which by the way, won't instal unless you go to the unpack folder in C:\SWTOOLS\WLAN\8AW217WW_S64\Win7\S64\Install and run Setup.exe after changing its compatibility to Win7). I also installed optional Intel's software that came with it (PRO/set WiFi Manager etc).
A Virtualbox install installs Virtualbox Host Only Adapter, which for some reason causes issues. If after waking up the system, if I disabled or enabled (if previously disabled) the host only adapter in Network Settings, the WiFi would connect to my network automatically. Upon uninstalling virtualbox, the issue went away.

 

I am having this problem too. Don't really know what's causing it.

It doesn't happen everytime the Thinkpad goes to sleep. It happens only when my X220 is put into sleep long enough (like a few hours). Upon a wake, all the Fn hotkeys no longer works, and wifi doesn't work either. The "A" on-screen display for caps lock will be there the whole time and won't go away. The only solution is to reboot, and after rebooting everything will be fine.

 

Found a fix!

I recently upgraded my BIOS to 1.37, and the problem seems to have disappeared. See here for more discussion:
Re: Wifi stops working after resume from standby - Page 3 - Lenovo Community