Gradual failure of wireless connectivi​ty in Windows XP on T61 ThinkPad

Question

My computer has gradually been getting worse about connecting to wireless internet, and now it seems to have completely stopped.  Perhaps it is a hardware issue and the wireless card has just become broken, but I don't know how to check whether that's the case.  I don't know whether these are typical symptoms, and I don't know the correct terminology to search the internet for, because for everyone else asking about similar things it seems to be correlated with some change in software, whereas mine just seems spontaneous.
The computer is a Lenovo T61 Thinkpad from 2008, running Windows XP SP2.
Until the past couple of days, the computer would usually connect to the internet fine, but sometimes (and in some physical locations almost all the time; this started a few months ago, but was primarily associated with one physical location until a few weeks ago) the green wifi indicator light icon thing right below the screen would be off.  When that happened, sometimes restarting the computer would fix it, but probably not most of the time.  Sometimes I could right-click the wireless-icon in the system tray (a little computer monitor with green waves coming out of it) and click "Repair", and that would fix it maybe half the time (though sometimes it would take a few tries).  When I would click "Repair", it would go through the "disabling wireless network adapter", "enabling wireless network adapter" (at which point the wifi indicator light almost always would turn on), "connecting to the wireless network", "renewing your IP address" (at this point the indicator light would sometimes turn off again; if it didn't turn off, then the connection would work, but often only for a few seconds or a few minutes before breaking again), "clearing the [DNS?] cache", and "registering with the DNS".  Then it would say that it had repaired the connection, it would show that it was connected to the network, but (if the indicator-light had turned off) the system-tray icon would not be flashing back and forth between blue and gray, it would just stay gray.  When I right-clicked on the system-tray icon and clicked "View Available Wireless Networks", it would show all the networks, and label the one I'm connected to as "Connected", but there wasn't any network traffic, web pages wouldn't load, email program said it failed to connect, etc.  If I tried to connect to a different network, it would say that the network was no longer available and I should refresh the network list, but refreshing the list didn't change anything.
Occasionally the wireless-icon in the system tray would be completely absent.  In those cases, sometimes I could go to Control Panel -> Network Connections and there would be an icon for the wireless connection, and when I would double-click that, it would say "Enabling ..." and then "Connection Failed!" (this method was never able to enable it).  Other times, the wireless connection isn't even listed there.
Anyway, as of yesterday, the indicator light never turns on, and as of today, the system-tray icon and the "wireless connection" listing under Network Connections are also gone.  The wireless adapter is also not listed in the Device Manager (I don't know whether it was before, I didn't check).
I called Lenovo tech support, and they said they weren't allowed to give me specific help because the computer isn't under warranty anymore, but they said it was likely a hardware issue.  They advised running the ThinkVantage System Update as a first step, which I did, and that had no effect.
So, should I just buy a new wireless card, or is there something else I should try first?

Answer 1

Hello,
I wonder if the ThinkPad T61 downloaded any updates while it was on the wired network?  If so, perhaps one of them was a device driver update for the wireless network card.
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
I am a volunteer and neither a Lenovo nor a Microsoft employee. • Dexter is a good dog • Dexter je dobrý pes
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