Sorry if this has been addressed before, but I’m currently dealing with some strange issues related to embedded devices in Panasonic Toughbooks.
They are all CF-31’s, some older and newer models.
Either running MC7750 or MC5725 devices.
Out of nowhere in the last few weeks we are having devices fail and becoming disabled. VZAccess shows devices as “WWAN being turned off”.
I have insured that both the hardware switch, software switch, and BIOS are all ON/enabled.
I have also re-imaged all machines to rule out Windows, Verizon, etc. updates or software complications.
Verizon and Panasonic (Heartland) support says it’s faulty hardware. I just find it interesting that within the last few days I’ve had 5-6 models have the exact same failures.
I’m wondering if VZAccess had firmware updates that pushed down and broke embedded Sierra devices.
Does anyone have any suggestions or know of any issues? Possibly flash back to old firmware?
Update-
I contacted Panasonic support.
We have 5 year warranty on these models.
After contacting them they stated that internal WWAN card was most likely bad.
I sent it back and card was replaced.
Unfortunately the problem is still there. Device appears to be disabled.
-Again checked BIOS, Software, Hardware switches - All show enabled.
-Uninstalled/Reinstalled Verizon software.
-System restore.
This is related to the incorrect firmware being loaded.
Finally was able to get support to tell me where to find location of utilities.
Under Gobi2K temp folder. There is a SetFirm2 application.
This showed that the firmware was set to “Vodafone”. Switched to “Verizon”.
All is good now. Cause is still unknown, possibly a botched firmware load from Verizon.
We have new CF19’s MK6’s with the MC7750 internal air cards. We have been seeing some of the similar issues as well. However, we were able to narrow it down to he internal air card will not turn on after a system shutdown. We can restart the toughbooks all day, and the air card will come up every time.
In order to get the air cards to turn back on after a system shutdown, we have to login as local administrator, and as soon as the see the desktop, the air card light is on. Then we can restart the system, and login as a domain user.
I find it hard to believe that I would have bad air cards in all of these Panasonic toughbooks. I also look at the possible fix, with the gobi2k, and I do not have a folder called Gobi2K in the utilities folder… I was so hoping I was on the something here!
Can you elaborate more on the fix for this? I’m in the exact same boat as you were in your problem described above.
I’m not sure how you got a gobi 2000 firmware application to work with the MC7750. When I run the setfirm2 app (which was not installed, I had to extract the CSA installer, which is not for this card) all it tells me is that it failed to load the firmware.
