Wednesday, May 09, 2012

Workaround: Wireless connection fails on “Waiting for Association” on Thinkpad T520 laptop

My work PC, a Lenovo Thinkpad T520 laptop running Windows 7, normally seamlessly switches between the wired network connection when docked, and the wireless network when undocked.

A few days ago, though, the laptop (without me having made any relevant changes to the machine’s hardware/software configuration) started failing at the “Waiting for Association” step when connecting to the wireless network after undocking.

Rebooting (while undocked) would work to resolve the problem, but taking multiple minutes to reboot the machine and reopen all of the programs/documents that I had been working with prior to the reboot was obviously a significant hassle.

This morning, I found a better workaround: In Device Manager, if I disable and then re-enable the wireless network adapter (“Intel(R) Centrino(R) Advanced-N 6205”), and then re-attempt the wireless connection via the Thinkvantage Access Connections system tray icon, the wireless does connect successfully.

I’ll update this post and/or make a new post on this blog if I discover a full fix.