wireless card is dead?

[mosherben]

Hi guys,
firstly I would like to say I am fairly comfortable with using computers; I'm doing my placement year for my computintg degree at a company that has a very high turnover.

To put it blunt, I think my Intel 2200BG wireless card might be dead. I was watching a movie last night, and I was able to connect to the internet using a linksys router. I fell asleep halfway through the movie, and the next thing I know is that it's 6AM and the room light is still on. Anyways, so I restarted my laptop and the POST screen says "Intel Pentium M", when it should normally say "Intel Centrino Technology". I didn't think it was a big deal, until I couldn't connect to the wireless network and my wireless card wasn't showing in device manager (I'm running Win XP Pro SP2). My understanding is that a laptop is using Centrino technology when it's got a Pentium M CPU, an Intel based chipset and a wireless card. I honestly don't have a clue about why the wireless card isn't working, there were no drinks at all near the laptop, which is a IBM Thinkpad r50e.

Does anyone have any ideas what's wrong and/or know a solution to fix it?

Cheers,
Ben

[ultim8um]

Check it in safe mode, after that you are looking at taking the keyboard out to get at the internals (reseat the card etc)... Also if you do need to get a replacement miniPCI wifi card just bear in mind that it has to be an IBM approved / branded card otherwise you will be going to a lot of trouble to get it to work!!! (and yes I own a few thinkpads!) Ebay is almost certainly your best friend should you need a card.

[mosherben]

Cheers for the reply.

Just for your reference, I did some googling and apparently there's a way to get any miniPCI wireless card to work in Thinkpads. See http://www.command-tab.com/2006/02/2...ss-cards/feed/ for details.

I'll try putting in a housemate's spare broadcom card into the laptop and see what happens when I get back from work. Will post back if I got anymore problems.

[ultim8um]

Yeah I have used the no-1802 patch before (I have had some success recovering passwords from thinkpad bios's before now so I am quite familiar with their quirks!)

BTW if you do need a new card then I would stick with a similar make and model e.g. intel 2200 as some cards simply will not work at all e.g. Atheros 5005+ chipset.