Lenovo wireless drivers and access connections

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Lenovo wireless drivers and access connections - 5/14/2008 4:16:50 PM

sounddoc

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Hi all,

In developing a working application for Lenovo Access Connections for MDT I came across the deployment guide from Lenovo which instructs on how to deploy .loa and .sig files for access connections (AC) profiles. This worked great in creating a profile on my T61 and deploying AC and the profile to a T43 - with one catch (of course) - the profile contains a definition of the wireless card that exists on my T61, so the T43 displays the device as "not found". Well, that's OK because it's not there.

If anyone has any experience in deploying Access Connections profiles to multiple models of thinkpads, I could use some advice on you did it. I guess I could always create multiple model based profiles and code for them to be deployed to each model, but this would be a huge hassle. Thanks!

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RE: Lenovo wireless drivers and access connections - 5/14/2008 8:39:14 PM

rtruss

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We have been using the Access Connections software since it was in version 2.x I deploy it to multiple systems, most of which use the atheros chip, and have not had any real issues with it. The only major diff between what you are doing and what we are doing is the sig file. I don't use it and have never had too. Where do you put the loa file? do you set it up so it gets applied at the time of the install? We place the loa file in the same location as the setup.exe and once the setup is done al profiles generally work, even on the few systems we have with the intel chip. we use the Atheros based wireless card as it seems to have better wireless performance than the intel and at the time intel could not work with Cisco's leap protocol. Of course now we are looking at Vista the Atheros chip will not do Leap authentication but intel will. UGH! Da^&it Microsoft!

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RE: Lenovo wireless drivers and access connections - 5/15/2008 10:09:30 AM

sounddoc

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I put the .loa file in the CONWIZ folder of the installation files as per the guide. I'm not sure if that activates it at startup, although I believe it's supposed to. If not there are a few ways to do it. one is with a short batch file:

qctray /importsilently
qctray /killac
qctray /startac

Another is simply rebooting - which is going to happen before the machine gets to the end user anyway.

What I'm doing now is installing AC using the ACCONWLD method per the guide, except I'm stuffing the installation directory with all the WLAN drivers in our environment (WLANATH, WLANATH2, WLANATH3, etc...). Fortunately the installer picks up all the drivers and installs the appropriate one.

After that I'm creating an loa for each type of wireless card in our env, and I'm just going to script an import based on machine type. It's a bit longwinded, but I'm still managing to keep a single image environment in the face of 10 or so models and 3 HALs :)

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RE: Lenovo wireless drivers and access connections - 5/15/2008 10:34:05 AM

rtruss

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If you mean "I'm not sure if that activates it at startup, although I believe it's supposed to" to mean during the install of the app then yes the install will read the loa file and apply those settings to AC. A reboot will be required after the install before you can use it. As far as applying loa files post setup we have not done that en-mass only via techs importing the data as needed.

Also, depending on how you build your systems you can prepopulate the wireless drivers at OS build time to make sure all is well before you try to install conwiz. We use ImageUltra to build our systems and set the following line in our unattend.txt file OemPnPDriversPath=DRIVERS\audio;DRIVERS\bluetooth;DRIVERS\lan;DRIVERS\Modem;DRIVERS\mouse;DRIVERS\other;DRIVERS\scsi;DRIVERS\usb;DRIVERS\video;DRIVERS\wireless. This would make your conwiz deployment easier.

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RE: Lenovo wireless drivers and access connections - 5/15/2008 10:36:02 AM

rtruss

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You could also try the forum below. It is dedicated to Lenovo Thinkvantage Technologies users

http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board?board.id=Special_Interest_Utilities

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RE: Lenovo wireless drivers and access connections - 6/11/2008 2:11:53 PM

permster

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I feel your pain. The Access Connections install is crap. We have one install that works on T23, T40, T41, T42, T60, and T61. What a freakin pain to get that working on all of them. I've seen that exact same problem you have many many times before. I built out the profile distribution on a T42 and all the time the T6x laptops with Intel cards would show they have the 11a/b/g with device not found.

We ended up ditching the ACCON 3.82 setup loader from Lenovo that they tell you to use in the admin guide and I built a custom VBScript install routine that installs all the components (OSD, IBMPM, Drivers, ACCON) seperately. This works so much better. I do the .loa and .sig in the CONWIZ folder with no problems when we do it that way.

If you want more info or if you just want to vent about Access Connections send me a PM.

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RE: Lenovo wireless drivers and access connections - 6/11/2008 4:33:52 PM

sounddoc

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Oddly enough, I just used an loa file from a T60 Single core (model number 2007) on a T61 Single core (model 7659-12u) and it worked! They might be using the same card though - haven't checked.

The way I do it is by following the guide, except with a few changes. First I throw AC 4.52 in the CONWIZ folder, and then I extract any of the Intel Pro drivers that are needed into the main folder. If they have conflicting names, like WLANINT, I just add a number, so I have WLANINT2 and WLANINT3 all in the same folder. By the grace of some deity, the installation (setup.exe) picks up whatever Pro driver set is needed for the machine. We use T60 and T61 single and dual cores, and T43s. We still have T42s lying around but they black screen (HAL issues) with my image. Its odd though, because T43s are a separate HAL, but they work. But other than that, so far, so good...

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RE: Lenovo wireless drivers and access connections - 6/11/2008 4:47:13 PM

permster

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Sounds good. Be careful of AC 4.52 if you place the .loa and .sig files into the CONWIZ folder. It will error if you try to reinstall overtop of itself. This is a confirmed problem by Lenovo level 2 support. They gave me an updated AC 4.52 install which resolves the issue, but I don't know when it will be publically available.

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RE: Lenovo wireless drivers and access connections - 6/11/2008 5:12:19 PM

sounddoc

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Good to know - just updated the Application store to 4.52 today. The way I handle it is through a custom variable called modelalias (google this and ben hunter and you'll see what I'm talking about). I then have loa files with each modelalias as the filename, e.g. 7659.loa, 7668.loa, etc... Then I run the script (excerpt) below to import the loa file, so the installation of AC4.52 is pristene, and the profile is imported post-install. If you reboot after the installation you can comment out the three 'qctray' commands as AC will pick it up next time it starts it's services. BTW - the last registry edit below turns off the annoying "save port locations" prompt everytime you plug into a new network:

Function ZTIProcess()

iRetVal = Success

ZTIProcess = iRetval

oLogging.CreateEntry "Starting AC Profile copy", LogTypeInfo

Dim strTarget, strSrc, strLoaFile
strTarget = "C:\Program Files\Thinkpad\ConnectUtilities\"
strSrc = oEnvironment.Item("ResourceRoot") & "\Applications\ACCON\ACPROFS\"
strLoaFile = strSrc & oEnvironment.Item("MODELALIAS") & ".loa"

oFso.copyfile strLoaFile, strTarget

oLogging.CreateEntry "Using " & oEnvironment.Item("MODELALIAS") & ".", LogTypeInfo
oLogging.CreateEntry "Copied " & strLoaFile & " to " & strTarget, LogTypeInfo

oShell.Run """C:\Program Files\Thinkpad\ConnectUtilities\qctray"" /importsilently",,true
oShell.Run """C:\Program Files\Thinkpad\ConnectUtilities\qctray"" /killac",,true
oShell.Run """C:\Program Files\Thinkpad\ConnectUtilities\qctray"" /startac",,true

'Turn off location switch prompting
oShell.regwrite "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Lenovo\Access Connections\Roaming\EnableEthernetRoaming",0,"REG_DWORD"

End Function

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Post #: 9