Fix: After undock, ThinkPad wireless connection doesn't work

For most of the time I've had my ThinkPad T60 laptop (running Windows XP SP2) and Advanced Mini-Dock, when I would undock the laptop from the docking station, the ThinkVantage Access Connections application would automatically and successfully enable the machine's wireless radio and connect me to the local wireless network. 

However, following a recent (May 2008) round of system software updates installed via ThinkVantage System Update, this no longer worked.  After undocking, the wireless connection would not automatically be made, and when I tried to manually connect using ThinkVantage Access Connections, the attempt would fail on the first step of the process, "Applying wireless settings."

After encountering this failure, I would be able to get the wireless to work correctly once again by rebooting the machine.  (Needless to say, I wasn't happy with this workaround, due to the delay involved in rebooting, and the need to close all open applications.)

The Fix - Executive Summary

I was able to fix the issue on my machine by reverting from ThinkVantage Access Connections version 4.52 to version 4.42.

The Fix - Long Version / Investigation

On one recent occasion where I undocked and subsequently encountered the issue, the ThinkVantage Access Connections service process, AcSvc.exe, crashed (with the typical Windows XP "This application has encountered a problem and needs to close" crash dialog).  I restarted the process (via the ThinkVantage Access Connections application shortcut on the Start menu), and after doing that, the wireless started working again, with no reboot involved.  This led me to believe that the issue was with the Access Connections software.

I reproduced the undock issue again, and this time manually killed the AcSvc.exe process (via Windows Task Manager), and restarted it, and that once again got the wireless networking to work.  So at that point I at least had a better workaround than needing to reboot. 

I continued to investigate the issue, and found a post on the Lenovo Support Forums indicating that another ThinkPad owner was having an apparently unrelated problem with AcSvc.exe, but that he was running Access Connections version 4.52, and that he had been able to resolve the issue by reverting to version 4.42.  I checked my ThinkVantage System Update log, and noticed that an upgrade to Access Connections 4.52 had been among the changes in the recent round of updates I had installed.  A co-worker who also had a T60 and was having no wireless issues also reported that he was running Access Connections 4.42.  Armed with all of this information, I decided to try reverting to Access Connections 4.42 to see if that would resolve the issue. 

I was somewhat nervous about doing this, since if the Access Connections installer didn't do a good job of handling the case of installing an older version of the software on top of a newer one, I could conceivably left in a broken state where my network connectivity (both wired and wireless) might not work at all.  To try and mitigate this risk, I backed up the registry entries and program files for Access Connection 4.52 before proceeding.

Fortunately, the Access Connections 4.42 installer had good handling for installing over a newer version: it recognized that I had a newer Access Connections version installed, and (with my approval) uninstalled the existing version before installing the 4.42 version.

Following a reboot, with Access Connections 4.42 installed, the laptop now once again automatically and successfully connections to the wireless network following an undock!

There was one remaining minor issue, though.  With Access Connections 4.42 reinstalled, I started seeing a new issue where upon an undock, I would get an error dialog with caption "netsh.exe - Unable to Locate Component", and dialog text "This application has failed to start because framedyn.dll was not found.  Re-installing the application may fix this problem."

Fortunately (and unlike for the original "Applying wireless settings" failure issue), help was readily available via a Google search for this issue.  Per a suggestion given in several of the search results, I copied the file framedyn.dll from my C:\Windows\system32\wbem folder to the C:\Windows\system32 folder; with this done, the error dialog now no longer appears.

Fix: Altered Logitech mouse behavior in some apps

In a previous post on an issue with Logitech mouse sensitivity settings, I noted that I had an unresolved issue on my Windows XP machine, where the speed and acceleration settings for my Logitech MX500 mouse getting lost while Microsoft Virtual PC Console was the foreground (active) application.  (The sensitivity of the mouse would suddenly increase quite a bit, causing a corresponding increase in the speed of the mouse cursor.)  Since then, I've noticed the same issue occurring in a couple of other applications as well, including the JMS queue browser HermesJMS, and the ThinkVantage Active Protection Windows Control Panel applet.

Today, I figured out the fix: In the Control Panel, in the Mouse applet, on the Motion tab, uncheck the "Disable acceleration in games" checkbox, then click OK.

Apparently the issue is caused by the Logitech software erroneously identifying the affected applications as games, and disabling the custom mouse speed/sensitivity and acceleration settings while those applications are active.

The "red squiggle" and user-entered filesystem paths

Wouldn't it be nice if the "red squiggle" that appears under misspelled user-typed words in many applications these days (such as Microsoft Word and Firefox 2) would also appear under mistyped portions of a filesystem path in "Open File" dialogs and other places where the user can manually type in a path, such as the Start | Run dialog, and the address bar of a Windows Explorer window?

Look closely at the highlighted section in the above Open dialog.  The last word in the path name entered by the user, "mircosoft," is a nonexistent file/directory name, and so a "red squiggle" appears under that portion of the entered path.

The image above is just a mockup; Windows XP doesn't actually do this.  Are there any current operating systems out there that do?

This would be a nice additional UI cue to the user that they have misspelled or mistyped something.  Currently, the only such cue in Windows XP that the user gets is that intellisense suggestions (suggested path/file names) stop showing up under the input field.

Control Windows Media Player with the ThinkPad Play/Pause Keys

Quick tip for ThinkPad owners: the media control keyboard keys located on the arrow keys at the bottom-right corner of the keyboard can be used to control music or other media playing in Windows Media Player (WMP) even when WMP isn't the foreground application! 

To use these keys, hold down the blue "Fn" key at the bottom-left corner of the keyboard, and press the appropriate arrow key.

With these keys, I can have music playing in Windows Media Player in the background (or in a minimized window), and be working in other applications in the foreground.  Then, when I get interrupted and want to pause my music (when the phone rings, or when a visitor arrives at my desk), instead of having to open the WMP window and click on the Pause button, I can just quickly push Fn + Play/Pause (the down arrow key), and my music is paused.  Another press of Fn + Play/Pause, and my music starts playing again.  Quite handy!

Tip: Expand your Windows Taskbar

A quick tip to make your Windows Taskbar a lot more usable is to expand its area and make it two rows high instead of one.  A pair of pictures are worth 2000 words:

These two images show the same Windows XP Taskbar with 12 applications running, and a bunch of icons in the system tray.  The difference is that in the second image, the Taskbar has been expanded to be two rows high instead of just one.

With the increased area available on the Taskbar, it's much easier to read the text that accompanies the icon on each application button, making it a lot easier to find (for example) a specific Firefox window or Word document.

To increase the number of rows in the Taskbar in this manner, just use the mouse to drag the top edge of the Taskbar upwards.  (You'll need to temporarily unlock the Taskbar first if you have it locked: Right-click an empty portion of the Taskbar, and uncheck the "Lock the Taskbar" option from the context menu that appears.)

Increasing the Taskbar area to two rows has a few other benefits as well:

• The system tray icons are grouped into three rows instead of just one, saving a lot of horizontal real estate on the Taskbar.  As a result, there's even more room available for application buttons to be shown.
• Windows shows the day and date in addition to the time on the right edge of the Taskbar; no need to hover over the time display with the mouse to see that information anymore.
• Although it isn't shown in the screen cap above, I've found that the bit of empty space below the Start button is a great place to tuck a SlickRun command line into.

With the large screen resolutions (and hopefully, multiple monitors) available on modern machines, the additional screen real estate consumed by increasing the Taskbar size to a second row is trivial compared to the usability and productivity gains realized by doing so.

(You might also note that I have the "Group Similar Icons" option from the Taskbar's Properties dialog turned off.  That option does save some Taskbar real estate, but at the significant cost of not being able to identify or access specific application windows from the Taskbar with a single-click.  Again, with the large amount of screen real estate available on modern systems, I don't see the benefit in ever having that option enabled.)