anewguy
June 10th, 2010, 05:08 AM
Alright, I figured it out on my own, and I am now connected to the Internet, and it boots perfectly fine. If anyone has trouble like I had, send me a message, I'll be more than willing to help you out, since it's impossible to get answers from anyone on here.
If you had mentioned earlier that your problem was with a Broadcom chipset wireless adapter, you would have gotten plenty of replies. In addition, there are *TONS* of posts on the forum and on the net for this. So, if someone is having a problem like this, provide the following information first:
- open a terminal window (Applications/Accessories/Terminal)
- if the adapter is a USB adapter, or if you are having problems getting internal wireless to work on a laptop, type:
lsusb <press enter> Copy the output and post in the opening post for your thread
- if it is internal wireless on a laptop or desktop, type:
lspci <press enter> Look for something that would indicate a wireless adapter - as an example it might say Broadcom BCM4316 Air Force One. Copy this output and post in the opening post for your thread
Also, for all wireless that isn't working, check in System/Administration/Hardware drivers and see if a restricted driver shows for the device. If it is not enabled, enabled it.
In addition, for a lot of the Broadcom devices, it comes in handy if you can temporarily hard-wire your PC to the router, then:
- open a terminal window (Applications/Accessories/Terminal)
- type:
sudo apt-get update <press enter> When prompted for a password just enter your regular password. It won't show on the screen for security purposes, but type it anyway.
In addition, you may need to type:
sudo apt-get upgrade <press enter>
Then check again under System/Administration/Hardware Drivers and see if there is a driver listed for the device now. If so, be sure it is enabled.
After you have added the driver via a hard-wired connection, disconnect the hard-wire cable, wait a couple of minutes.
If you are unable to get a driver working under the above instructions, or perhaps you have read about and want to use ndiswrapper, the following is for you:
Ndiswrapper is a utility which lets you use the Windows XP wireless drivers in Linux. You may have seen other posts on ndiswrapper that required a lot of typing (even some of my own old posts). For the most part, you can use a windowed front end to ndiswrapper that makes it easy to install your driver. Here are the steps:
- if you have a network connection, go to Synaptic Package Manager and install ndiswrapper common and ndiswrapper utilities
- if you do not have a network connection:
Put the LiveCD in your drive. After it spins up you may get a notice about a disk with software packages was detected. Just cancel out of that.
Via "Places", go to the media drive containing the LiveCD
Navigate to the pool/main/n folder. You will find two subfolders there - one for ndisgtk and one for ndiswrapper. We must do ndiswrapper first, so click on that folder to open it. There you will find 2 files - one for ndiswrapper-common, and one for ndiswrapper-utilities. Double click on the ndiswrapper-common file to begin installing it. Once it finishes installing, double click on the ndiswrapper-utilities file to begin installing it. When these 2 installations have finished, navigate back 1 folder level to the pool/main/n folder. Locate the ndisgtk folder and click on it to open it. Double click on the file there to begin installing it. When it has finished you can exit the terminal by typing "exit" and pressing "enter".
Now you need the files for your Windows driver - there should be at least one .inf file and at least one .sys file. Copy these files to your Ubuntu desktop.
Start ndisgtk via System/Administration/Windows Wireless Drivers.
When ndisgtk opens up, just "Add" and point it to the driver .inf file you placed on your desktop.
When it finishes it should show the device as active.
For all:
Check in network manager to be sure that "Enable Wireless" is checked.
Now check to see if you have wireless access points showing in network manager.
Some devices do require more - if you have problems with ANY wireless adapter or instructions for setting it up, please gather the output of the lsusb and lspci commands as shown above, then open a thread being sure to post the outputs from the commands in your opening post.
I'm sorry you did not get the response you thought you deserved. Maybe your thread went in at one of the times when a lot of us weren't watching and/or we just missed it. Our apologies, and glad you got it working.
dave ;)