Hi Bob,

Unfortunately there are not a LOT of Mandriva users here in PHX.

Let's "package" this issue to troubleshoot:

a) Did you hit the wireless hardware switch on your Lenovo?

b) Logs please: iwconfig dmesg

c) Which wireless card do you have on your Lenovo:

Intel 802.11agn Mini PCI Express wireless adapter on selected models.
ThinkPad 802.11bg Mini PCI Express wireless adapter on selected models.
Intel 802.11agn+802.16e WiMAX wireless adapter on selected models.
Qualcomm HS-USB for Verizon Wireless WAN (UNDP) on selected models

d) What kernel version driver are you using:

lspci -vv

e) You didn't use anything like ndiswrapper to install the altheros chipset driver or anything like that?

https://wiki.mageia.org/en/QA_iso_hardware_list

This guy seems to also have your same issue:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/linuxusersgroup/-s8AQGA-huI

Sent: Friday, December 19, 2014 at 9:41 AM
From: "Bob Wallace" <bob.wallace39@gmail.com>
To: plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org
Subject: WiFi connect issue

Snowbird in town for the winter with a WiFi connect issue between laptop
and hot spot. While the wlan0 is coming up at boot time, it's not
allowing the laptop to connect with it in any way other than a direct
plug-in to the USB port. After digging around inside, it appears the
device phy0 is set up with an address that is different from the hot
spot that wlan0 should connect with. Connecting with anything other than
the hot spot -- library, coffee shop -- is not an issue, it connects
every time, everywhere. The laptop's WiFi connect setup for the hot spot
is using the correct address for making the connection, but is not
connecting wirelessly.

Background: This is a Lenovo T500 running Mageia v4, all system files up
to date. Mageia is a fork of Mandriva (Mandrake prior to that) from
several years ago.

Bob Wallace
Wintering in Phoenix