Click the “Radio Off” to disable the wireless connection. The statuses of your wireless adapters (referred to in the picture above as “radios”) are displayed. To access the software wireless switch press Fn+F5 on your laptop’s keyboard. Slide the switch to your right to enable wireless networking, and slide it to your left to disable it. On newer Thinkpad laptops there is a hardware switch used to enable and disable wireless networking on the laptop. Make sure the wireless adapter is enabled… Thinkpad Hardware Wireless Switch For more specific troubleshooting information, please see Lenovo's documentation ( here).

This article describes the basics of managing wireless network connections on Lenovo Thinkpad laptops.