Aug 03 2009
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Lenovo Thinkpad with Intel wireless won’t connect to an Airport Extreme base station
Update: This method is no longer recommended due to a recently-discovered vulnerability in WPA/TKIP. I found and blogged about a better solution here: How to make an Intel wireless card connect to an Apple Airport base station in WPA2 mode.
We had a problem with a Lenovo Thinkpad T500 notebook that has Intel wireless networking built-in.
It could not connect to our Airport Extreme wireless network that is secured using WPA/WPA2 encryption. When you try to connect, the Windows wireless status window alternates between “Connecting” and “Acquiring IP address” forever.
The solution is to change the authentication method from AES to TKIP. To do this:
- Open Windows’ Network Connections window. One way to do this is to open Control Panel > Network and Internet Connections.
- Right-click on the wireless network connection and choose “Properties.”
- On the “Wireless Networks” tab, under “Preferred Networks,” locate your network and click “Properties.”
- Change “Data Encryption” from AES to TKIP and click OK to close the dialogs.
