Comprehensive ndiswrapper troubleshooting guide

[pytheas22]

im about to use this method to see if i can get my atheros 5007 card to work "fully" ? if i load a xp driver for it why the heck won't the led and switch work too ? makes no sense to me at all, it works in xp and vista. the led and switch itself are part of the wifi card so the driver should enable them both. this seems to be an ongoing issue with several types of laptops and it needs to be resolved.

I don't have a laptop with an Atheros card, so I'm not familiar with this issue, but I agree that it's something that should be worked out.

I wanted to point out to you, however, that a better way to get your card working would to be use the native madwifi drivers. The version of madwifi that ships with Ubuntu 8.04 is too old to support Atheros 5007, but if you compile a more recent version of madwifi from source, your card should work (maybe even with the LED). You can install newer madwifi very easily by using the script from this thread. Run the script, reboot, and your card should work (make sure that ath_pci is not on the blacklist, of course).

ndiswrapper would probably also work, although I seem to recall people having issues with ar5007 and ndiswrapper on 64-bit Linux. They may have been resolved by now, however, or I may be thinking of something else. Either way, I highly recommend trying madwifi first.

Also, in Ubuntu 8.10, your card should have support out-of-the-box, so none of this would be an issue.

[smooth3006]

I don't have a laptop with an Atheros card, so I'm not familiar with this issue, but I agree that it's something that should be worked out.

I wanted to point out to you, however, that a better way to get your card working would to be use the native madwifi drivers. The version of madwifi that ships with Ubuntu 8.04 is too old to support Atheros 5007, but if you compile a more recent version of madwifi from source, your card should work (maybe even with the LED). You can install newer madwifi very easily by using the script from this thread. Run the script, reboot, and your card should work (make sure that ath_pci is not on the blacklist, of course).

ndiswrapper would probably also work, although I seem to recall people having issues with ar5007 and ndiswrapper on 64-bit Linux. They may have been resolved by now, however, or I may be thinking of something else. Either way, I highly recommend trying madwifi first.

Also, in Ubuntu 8.10, your card should have support out-of-the-box, so none of this would be an issue.

i have my card working with the newest madwifi, but no the switch and led still a no go. i thought maybe if installed a xp driver for the card everything may work? i know im being picky but it does bother me for some reason. yes ive heard 8.10 will support my card. i tried mandriva 2009 and the card worked "out of the box" but still no led or switch, i really think linux needs to work on this as alot of people would like everything to work or at least give us a fix for it.

i think it may be back to vista for me now.

[pytheas22]

i have my card working with the newest madwifi, but no the switch and led still a no go. i thought maybe if installed a xp driver for the card everything may work? i know im being picky but it does bother me for some reason. yes ive heard 8.10 will support my card. i tried mandriva 2009 and the card worked "out of the box" but still no led or switch, i really think linux needs to work on this as alot of people would like everything to work or at least give us a fix for it.

I understand better what you're trying to do now. There's a decent chance that the LED would work under ndiswrapper, but I'm not sure. There's also a bug report regarding this issue that you may want to follow. Unfortunately it doesn't have many responses yet, but hopefully someone will figure out the issue soon. It's probably just a matter of the madwifi project adding support for the LED on this chipset.

[smooth3006]

I understand better what you're trying to do now. There's a decent chance that the LED would work under ndiswrapper, but I'm not sure. There's also a bug report regarding this issue that you may want to follow. Unfortunately it doesn't have many responses yet, but hopefully someone will figure out the issue soon. It's probably just a matter of the madwifi project adding support for the LED on this chipset.

thanks for this but i have since gone back to vista. ubuntu is a great system but needs alot of work yet. maybe ill try 8.10 once it comes out and matures a bit more.

[kaffeboy]

I tried the ndiswrapper in 8.04 - 64 bit...dead end!

I want 8.10 to come out to see if it works out of the box. Vista is awful. Right now Im on Mandriva. However, I hate KDE 4 and Im too lazy to put Gnome just to install Ubuntu in less than a week over it.

[pytheas22]

I tried the ndiswrapper in 8.04 - 64 bit...dead end!

I want 8.10 to come out to see if it works out of the box. Vista is awful. Right now Im on Mandriva. However, I hate KDE 4 and Im too lazy to put Gnome just to install Ubuntu in less than a week over it.

You can install the beta version of Intrepid (or at least test it on the live CD) if you want. It should be pretty stable now. Intrepid comes with a lot more wireless drivers out-of-the-box, so there's a decent chance that your card will "just work" under 8.10, especially if it works in Mandriva.

You can download the Intrepid beta ISO from here.

If Intrepid doesn't work and you want to try ndiswrapper again, please tell me the output of:

lspci -nn
lsusb
lshw -C Network

[night_fox]

Dear Pytheas22,

Thanks for helping me to get ndiswrapper working properly! I have changed my name from John164918a. BTW I have completely given up on ndiswrapper and have gone for b43fwcutter. Thanks very much for this thread, it is really useful for anyone wishing to use ndiswrapper and you must give up a lot of time to help people here.

Many thanks,

John



3 days to go!

[pytheas22]

Thanks for helping me to get ndiswrapper working properly! I have changed my name from John164918a. BTW I have completely given up on ndiswrapper and have gone for b43fwcutter. Thanks very much for this thread, it is really useful for anyone wishing to use ndiswrapper and you must give up a lot of time to help people here.

Glad that you got it working! The b43 driver is ideally the way to go anyway...ndiswrapper should be less and less necessary as better and better native Linux wireless drivers are built. But I'm glad this thread helped you either way.

[CJ_Hudson]

Hi this is fabulous- just got my wireless connection up and running again after a fresh install. Just got to get Windows back and operational on the other partition now seeing as it seems to have got corrupted in the process.

[kevdog]

Hmmm -- just wondering how this particular sticky survived when all the others died! I would vote for a conspiracy