Whistledance
May 3rd, 2008, 06:40 AM
Hello everyone, I am completely new to Ubuntu and recently bought a new laptop. The laptop came with Vista and it runs so badly that I do not even want to consider it an option. I installed Hardy Heron and everything went just beautifully all except getting the laptop's wireless capability to work . I see that laptops and wireless is a common problem for Ubuntu users and after a week of constant Googling and fiddling about I am about ready to give up, I hope someone can help me. Please excuse me if I use incorrect terminology and the long post I am very new to this and I wanted to give as much information as I could about my problem.
My problem seems like a minor one, but I guess I am no judge. The wireless card that is installed in my Toshiba laptop is a Realtek RTL8187B I have installed the necessary drivers by following a variety of tutorials and walkthroughs that I found on the web. And the wireless card still will not work. I have an external wireless dongle that uses the 8187L chipset and that worked fine just out of the box. But I would rather not use the external thing when my laptop has something similar inside somewhere.
When I am in Vista the laptop's internal wireless card is activated using a little physical switch on the front of the machine. Flicking this switch enables the card and switches on a little orange light. But when I change operating systems to Ubuntu this little light does not light-up no matter how much switching I do. Now here is where I think the problem lies and is where I hope someone can help me. If I switch back into Vista after working in Ubuntu the wireless card is disabled, no amount of switching will get the light to come on. So I use Vista's Network and Sharing center's connection repair tool and the light comes on, activating the card.
It seems to me that I need to be able to perform this action in Ubuntu to get my wireless card to work. So here is my question after so much rambling. How can I enable my wireless card in Ubuntu so that it works the same way that it does in Vista.
I hope I have given enough information for someone to help me with my problem. Please let me know if you want me to ramble some more.
My problem seems like a minor one, but I guess I am no judge. The wireless card that is installed in my Toshiba laptop is a Realtek RTL8187B I have installed the necessary drivers by following a variety of tutorials and walkthroughs that I found on the web. And the wireless card still will not work. I have an external wireless dongle that uses the 8187L chipset and that worked fine just out of the box. But I would rather not use the external thing when my laptop has something similar inside somewhere.
When I am in Vista the laptop's internal wireless card is activated using a little physical switch on the front of the machine. Flicking this switch enables the card and switches on a little orange light. But when I change operating systems to Ubuntu this little light does not light-up no matter how much switching I do. Now here is where I think the problem lies and is where I hope someone can help me. If I switch back into Vista after working in Ubuntu the wireless card is disabled, no amount of switching will get the light to come on. So I use Vista's Network and Sharing center's connection repair tool and the light comes on, activating the card.
It seems to me that I need to be able to perform this action in Ubuntu to get my wireless card to work. So here is my question after so much rambling. How can I enable my wireless card in Ubuntu so that it works the same way that it does in Vista.
I hope I have given enough information for someone to help me with my problem. Please let me know if you want me to ramble some more.