thinkpad access connections can no longer turn my wireless card on

I have a thinkpad t42p (model# 2373htu) running windows xp and the
"IBM thinkpad access connections" program to configure the builtin
"11a/b/g wireless lan mini pci adapter".

To be even more precise on one detail, I have two disks in this
laptop, each with windows xp installed, one is for work use (and the
software installed on it is specified by the IT group) and the other
copy of xp is for personal use and has software I bought on it. The
bios allows me to select which drive I boot from.

Recently, I was required (a forced download/reboot when I connected to
my jobs network*) to install a new version of the access connections
program in the work copy of xp, version 4.13. I don't know what (if
any) other software might have been installed by IT as part of that
patch. I'm pretty certain that some new anti-virus and other security
software got loaded.

(*the forced download is why I have two copies of xp, so when IT
messes something up, it is only "their" copy.)

However, upon doing so, the wireless card no longer will "turn on".
That is, the wireless card doesn't turn on when I boot the computer
using that drive as the boot drive and when I hit the fn+f5 key, the
menu comes up where I "should" be able to turn the wireless radio on,
but clicking the "on" button does nothing, the radio stays off. I can
click the bluetooth radio on and off, but I don't use that for
anything. there is another way to turn the radio on in the access
connections program, but that also does nothing. No, when the
software attempts to connect using the adapter, it can't because the
radio isn't turned on--I can't see the exact message at the moment,
because the laptop is sitting in a docking station and is using a
wired connection.

In contrast, when I boot the home copy of xp, the wireless radio turns
on at boot time, and the fn+f5 key allows me to turn it both off and
on. It is, of course, using a previous version of access connections,
version 4.12.

Does anyone know how to "roll back" access connections to the previous
version to see if that corrects this problem? Are there other
suggestions for trouble shooting it? How about device drivers? Is it
possible that I got a new and broken device driver for this wireless
device?

Thanks,
-Chris

On Feb 12, 6:40 pm, Chris F Clark <c...@shell01.TheWorld.com> wrote:
> Does anyone know how to "roll back" access connections to the previous
> version to see if that corrects this problem? Are there other
> suggestions for trouble shooting it? How about device drivers? Is it
> possible that I got a new and broken device driver for this wireless
> device?
Chris,

I'd recommend you go into the Device Manager ("Start" -> "Run" ->
"devmgmt.msc") and uninstall the WiFi adapter. Reboot the machine and
run the ThinkVantage program again.

-- Andreas K.