CF19 Mk1 Trouble with Wireless Switch Utility W7

I have a CF19 Mk1 that I have been running XP on for some time. I decided last night to make the jump to Win 7.

I am already running 3GB of RAM and installed a new Hybrid 500GB SSD drive.

The Win 7 install went well. It even seemed to detect my video and network drivers with no problems.

I am following RCX's thread on putting Win 7 on a CF-18 during my install. (Thank you for this resource, it has been extremely helpful.)

Anyway, my problem arises with the installation of the Wireless Switch Utility (WSU). To that point, as I've been installing all the drivers (in order) everything has been working.

After installing the Wireless Switch Utility and restarting, my wireless network is now not connecting and I can't seem to get it to work.

A system diagnostic reports that the hardware switch is turned off, which it is not. My wireless network is Enabled... yet it is reporting that no connections are available.

If I try to uninstall the WSU, I get a message that I need to Enable my Wireless COnnection before uninstalling. Yet if I go to look at my Wireless Connection Settings, it shows that it is enabled.

Everything was going so well. I'd prefer not to have to start over reformatting and reinstalling, but will if need be. To be honest, I'm not sure what advantage Panasonic's Switch Utility gives me if the wireless was functioning fine without it?

Can anyone explain to me why I would want to have it and if there is anything I can try to repair this from this point? Or should I reformat and start again just leaving this out? Will that hurt anything?

 

Looking at this a little further... I've determined that if I disable the Wireless Switch in the BIOS, my wireless will work on Boot. (THough I get an error message on boot that the Wireless Connection Disable depends on teh Wireless Switch Utility and can't run)

Is the Wireless switch utility necessary for the WWAN vs WLAN feature? I'm just trying to figure out if I really need it, or if I can just leave it disabled. Just not sure what it's exact purpose is.

On Edit: Nevermind. I'm thinking too hard about this. I am reading "switch" and my mind is thinking "Network Switch" not hardware switch.

With the Wireless Switch disabled in BIOS, I was then able to uninstall the Wireless Switch Utiliity. (And the Wireless Connection Disable Utility). Then, on restart, I re-enabled the Wireless Switch in BIOS, the system came back upa nd eveything is working w/o the Panasonic utilities. I can even toggle my Wireless Switch on and Off and it works, enabling or disabling the connection.

So I can see no reason to install the Panasonic bits for this if Windows is handling the function fine so I'm going to skip them and move on.

Please chime in if you know of a reason that this is a bad mistake. Otherwise, I'm thinking this is a non-issue for me.

 

Sai...You must install the other switch utility for wlan. There are two switch driver on the system. The one you've installed is to control bt, wlan and wwan. I've forgot the exact id but it there at the panasonic site driver download.


ohlip

 

or, if you upgrade HDD, RAM, etc, it would be good to upgrade wi-fi card too
if you install, say, Atheros AR9280 (it's N with 300Mbps, I use it), wireless utility will not disable it )

 

If you are using Panasonic ToughBook CF-19, go into BIOS > Advanced > and set the "Wireless Switch" option to DISABLED. Also, if you need, you can uninstall the Panasonic Wireless Switch software after you have disabled the BIOS option as mentioned above.

This fixed the issue for me with wireless not working/unable to turn on the wireless issues.

 

Well to the Panasonic Toughbook forum
Thanks for the fix . Hope this works for others too.