Wifi Problem with Dell Inspiron Laptop

[ChessMasterJoe]

THE PROBLEM IS SOLVED!!!! Much thanks the Hadaka and Chill555 for their help. Great learning experience.

Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!!!!

[chili555]

Awesome. Glad it's working. Please use thread tools at the top to mark Solved. The searchers will appreciate it.

Have fun!

[ChessMasterJoe]

Sorry to bump this thread, but I recently installed the 64 bit version of Ubuntu 12.04 on my Dell Laptop again and I'm unable to get the wireless card working. After following all of the steps on page 8, I got the following message after trying to install the package Chili supplied. I also tried the other 64 bit package with the same result. I'll post the terminal data below.

joseph@joseph-Inspiron-5720:~$ sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic build-essential dkms
[sudo] password for joseph:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
build-essential is already the newest version.
dkms is already the newest version.
linux-headers-generic is already the newest version.
The following package was automatically installed and is no longer required:
thunderbird-globalmenu
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 128 not upgraded.
joseph@joseph-Inspiron-5720:~$ cd Downloads
joseph@joseph-Inspiron-5720:~/Downloads$ ls
wireless-bcm43142-dkms_6.20.55.19-1_amd64.deb
joseph@joseph-Inspiron-5720:~/Downloads$ sudo dpkg -i wire*.deb
(Reading database ... 166232 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace wireless-bcm43142-dkms 6.20.55.19-1 (using wireless-bcm43142-dkms_6.20.55.19-1_amd64.deb) ...

------------------------------
Deleting module version: 6.20.55.19
completely from the DKMS tree.
------------------------------
Done.
Unpacking replacement wireless-bcm43142-dkms ...
Setting up wireless-bcm43142-dkms (6.20.55.19-1) ...
Loading new wireless-bcm43142-6.20.55.19 DKMS files...
Building only for 3.8.0-29-generic
Building initial module for 3.8.0-29-generic
Error! Bad return status for module build on kernel: 3.8.0-29-generic (x86_64)
Consult /var/lib/dkms/wireless-bcm43142/6.20.55.19/build/make.log for more information.
joseph@joseph-Inspiron-5720:~/Downloads$ ^C
joseph@joseph-Inspiron-5720:~/Downloads$

[chili555]

Error! Bad return status for module build on kernel: 3.8.0-29-generic (x86_64)
Consult /var/lib/dkms/wireless-bcm43142/6.20.55.19/build/make.log for more information.

So, did you consult the log? What does it say?

cat /var/lib/dkms/wireless-bcm43142/6.20.55.19/build/make.log

Probably the last ten or so lines have the problem.