HOWTO: Dell Inspiron E1505 Wireless (Broadcom 1390 WLAN)

[Stephen47]

I am in my home directory.

[paperdiesel]

I am in my home directory.

Well then you are not in the correct directory. You need to run the uninstall command from inside the directory where you extracted ndiswrapper (the program, not the driver).

[ender8282]

I am still at a loss for how to get my wireless working. I have not been able to get any more messages posted when I try to load the drivers.
I have tried re-downloading all of the packages and re-running all of the commands. I have the WiFi light on and I set the bios to always have wireless enabled. I am unsure if this means anything but when I run the command

lspci

I get a list and I wanted to know if there was any relevance to the line

0b:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation Unknown device 4311 (rev 01)

I think that that is my wireless card. Is it an unknown device because I have not installed the driver or for some other reason?
If any one has any ideas or suggestions they would be appreciated.
thanks
John

[paperdiesel]

I am still at a loss for how to get my wireless working. I have not been able to get any more messages posted when I try to load the drivers.
I have tried re-downloading all of the packages and re-running all of the commands. I have the WiFi light on and I set the bios to always have wireless enabled. I am unsure if this means anything but when I run the command

lspci

I get a list and I wanted to know if there was any relevance to the line

0b:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation Unknown device 4311 (rev 01)

I think that that is my wireless card. Is it an unknown device because I have not installed the driver or for some other reason?
If any one has any ideas or suggestions they would be appreciated.
thanks
John

Ender, that lspci output is normal. Even after your wireless is working properly, you'll get that same output (I see the exact same thing on my laptop).

What model dell are you using again?

Also, start all the way over (remember to uninstall first). When you get to the part where you do the sudo ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf, post the dmesg and /var/log/syslog output.

[rowanparker]

Paperdiesel, you had a chance to look at the text files I uploaded.
Or shall I just try starting from scratch or something?

Thanks, Rowan.

[Stephen47]

Well then you are not in the correct directory. You need to run the uninstall command from inside the directory where you extracted ndiswrapper (the program, not the driver).

Which is my home directory.

[paperdiesel]

Which is my home directory.

No, it's not. If you extracted that ndiswrapper tarball in your home directory, then tar creates another directory and puts all the files in there. The directory usually looks something like ndiswrapper-1.28/. In your case, it would look similar to /home/stephen/ndiswrapper-1.28/.

[paperdiesel]

Paperdiesel, you had a chance to look at the text files I uploaded.
Or shall I just try starting from scratch or something?

Thanks, Rowan.

Hey Rowan,

Ok, I did some digging around on dell.com for the 640m. Unsurprisingly, the 640m/E1405 uses a different set of drivers than the E1505 for which I wrote this how-to. So I suggest you start all the way over (make sure you uninstall the drivers AND ndiswrapper -- see earlier posts in this thread for instructions), then reboot. Then when you get to the driver install part, you can try the version for your specific model, link provided below:

R140747.EXE

Man... Dell should pay me for this crap.

[rowanparker]

Hey Rowan,

I looked at them. As far as I can tell, they don't mention anything about ndiswrapper or your wireless card, which is weird. I would go back and triple check to make sure that the blacklist line is in your blaklists file, that the wifi hotkey is set to always on / key disabled. Are you using an E1505? If it's an E1501, you could try using the other drivers that are mentioned in the how-to.

Thanks, I will double check. No wait, tripple check

The dell is a E1405.

I have just checked the dell site and the driver download (for XP) is the same for both the E1505 as the E1405.

[paperdiesel]

Thanks, I will double check. No wait, tripple check

The dell is a E1405.

I have just checked the dell site and the driver download (for XP) is the same for both the E1505 as the E1405.

Actually, no. I just updated the how-to to reflect the latest version of the drivers and ndiswrapper. If you were trying it with the old wireless drivers (115132.EXE or something like that), then I suggest you try it with the new ones. And grab the new ndiswrapper as well.