Comprehensive ndiswrapper troubleshooting guide

[pytheas22]

chrisjabroni: thanks for the output. This line in your dmesg output points to the problem:

[   83.331762] ndiswrapper (load_wrap_driver:108): couldn't load driver neta5agu; check system log for messages from 'loadndisdriver'

But unfortunately it doesn't provide many details. Could you please also post:

grep -e ndis -e wlan -e neta5 /var/log/syslog

Hopefully that will provide more information about exactly why the driver doesn't want to load.

Also, are you using the 32- or 64-bit version of Ubuntu? (If you're not sure, what is the output of "uname -m"?) And are you sure the Windows driver that you have loaded into ndiswrapper is built for the same architecture--i.e., if you are using 32-bit Ubuntu, your Windows driver needs also to be for 32-bit versions of Windows, and ditto for the 64-bit version. Sometimes issues on this front can produce the messages about being unable to load the driver.

As for ACPI, you can read more about it on Wikipedia (I don't know enough about it myself to explain the details), but it basically provides various services related to power management and other things. In your case I don't think it has anything to do with the wireless card not working; I think it's just a coincidence that you get those warnings regarding ACPI spammed to your dmesg. I googled a little and it seems like this is a common issue affecting people who don't use ndiswrapper at all. I think you can do some things to get rid of the error messages, but let's try to get the wireless working first.

Am i supposed to do anything at that point?

No, don't worry about that. It always pauses for a second while reading "PCI," during which time the program is scanning your devices. After a second or two it should show more output and return to the command line.

[chrisjabroni]

Well, I went digging through some old computer parts and I found an old PCI wireless adapter. Turns out as soon as I installed that, ubuntu was asking me for my wireless password.

Solves my problem, I appreciate your help pytheas! You are very intelligent! Thank you

I'm actually gonna miss doing all these troubleshooting steps, it was kinda fun ...

[pytheas22]

chrisjabroni: glad to hear you're sorted out, and sorry we couldn't find a true solution--but if you have hardware that "just works," that's probably better, because this other wireless card seems to be kind of strange when it comes to ndiswrapper, based on the googling I did.

Enjoy Ubuntu

[DarkTide]

I don't kwon why I installed it in the first place. I just wnat the standard Ubuntu driver back. No ndiswarpeer stuff (not that it's not a good program, but my Wifi worked fine with the standard stuff).

desktop:~$ iwlist scan

lo Interface doesn't support scanning.

[pytheas22]

DarkTide: you should be able to go back to the native Ubuntu driver for your device just by blacklisting ndiswrapper (i.e., add the line "blacklist ndiswrapper" to your /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf file) and making sure that the native driver is not blacklisted.

I'm not sure what your native driver is because I don't know what hardware you have, but if you post the output of these commands I could probably tell you:

lshw -C Network
lspci -nn
lsusb

[dngen]

dngen: well, it's certainly good that you can get connected with wireless turned off, even if briefly. That helps narrow down the possible causes of the issue. Unfortunately, the keyring bit is unrelated to the disconnects; it just pops up every time you log in so that your passwords will become available to the system.

It would be helpful to see the output of the commands:

dmesg | tail -25
dmesg | grep -e wlan -e ndis

immediately after you get disconnected. With any luck, that will provide some useful clues as to what exactly is going wrong.

I also wonder if you'd now have better connection stability using wicd instead of NetworkManager. You probably won't because I suspect the issue has to do with the driver itself rather than the connection manager, but it would be worth a try.

Sorry, I haven't been busy with midterms so I wasn't able to try those commands after the wifi disconnected.

So after installing 11.04, if I disable the security settings on my router, I can connect just fine. No more disconnection problems.

Here is the original output of lshw -C Network before connecting:

                                   
*-network 
        description: Wireless interface 
        product: BCM4321 802.11a/b/g/n 
        vendor: Broadcom Corporation 
        physical id: 0 
        bus info: pci@0000:0b:00.0 
        logical name: wlan0 
        version: 03 
        serial: 00:22:69:79:2b:57 
        width: 64 bits 
        clock: 33MHz 
        capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless 
        configuration: broadcast=yes driver=ndiswrapper+bcmwl5 driverversion=1.56+Broadcom,10/12/2006, 4.100. latency=0 link=no multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11g 
        resources: irq:17 memory:f1efc000-f1efffff memory:f0000000-f00fffff

Here is the code after connecting:

                                  
*-network 
        description: Wireless interface 
        product: BCM4321 802.11a/b/g/n 
        vendor: Broadcom Corporation 
        physical id: 0 
        bus info: pci@0000:0b:00.0 
        logical name: wlan0 
        version: 03 
        serial: 00:22:69:79:2b:57 
        width: 64 bits 
        clock: 33MHz 
        capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless 
        configuration: broadcast=yes driver=ndiswrapper+bcmwl5 driverversion=1.56+Broadcom,10/12/2006, 4.100. ip=192.168.0.101 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11g 
        resources: irq:17 memory:f1efc000-f1efffff memory:f0000000-f00fffff

The only difference I see is that I managed to get an IP address =/

Could a problem be that my wireless card is also N (or Draft N not sure) yet this driver is only using the G band for some reason?

EDIT: Not sure if this information will help, but I've also tried connecting to my campus' Wi-Fi. It doesn't seem to connect to secured networks

[pytheas22]

dngen: any chance the connection works stably using just the native driver (i.e., the one available from the System>Administration>Additional Drivers utility) now that you've upgraded to Ubuntu 11.04? I suppose you've already tried, but just wanted to check, as Ubuntu 11.04 should contain a more up-to-date version of the driver.

Otherwise, have you tried all the possible security configurations (WEP, WPA1, WPA2, WPA1 and WPA2) on your router, and are unable to connect with any of them?

Could a problem be that my wireless card is also N (or Draft N not sure) yet this driver is only using the G band for some reason?

That doesn't seem like it could be the issue. The mode should not affect the driver's ability to connect, or not, to an encrypted network.

[dngen]

dngen: any chance the connection works stably using just the native driver (i.e., the one available from the System>Administration>Additional Drivers utility) now that you've upgraded to Ubuntu 11.04? I suppose you've already tried, but just wanted to check, as Ubuntu 11.04 should contain a more up-to-date version of the driver.

Otherwise, have you tried all the possible security configurations (WEP, WPA1, WPA2, WPA1 and WPA2) on your router, and are unable to connect with any of them?


That doesn't seem like it could be the issue. The mode should not affect the driver's ability to connect, or not, to an encrypted network.

I just tried connecting at my friend's place whose router is secured by WEP. It works perfectly so I guess WPA2 is the problem

EDIT:
I don't think the native Broadcom driver will work any better now that I'm on 11.04. On the "Additional Drivers" window, it states on top that proprietary drivers updates and corrections depend on the manufacturer. "Ubuntu cannot fix or improve these drivers."

[pytheas22]

I just tried connecting at my friend's place whose router is secured by WEP. It works perfectly so I guess WPA2 is the problem

That's encouraging. If you're able to switch your router to WPA1, or to play with the WPA2 settings generally, I'd see if that makes a difference. There are a variety of combinations when it comes to this stuff: you can generally choose to use WPA1, WPA2 or both WPA1 and WPA2 at the same time, and you should also have choices between AES and TKIP for the encryption scheme. You may find a configuration that will allow you to connect.

It's also possible that changing the channel of your router might make a difference.

If none of the above helps, I could tell you how to try doing the WPA connection from the command line, but that's quite complicated and it would be great if you were able simply to configure your router in a way that solves the issue.

[dngen]

Earlier, I was at a friends house testing the wireless. It doesn't work on any WPA/WPA2 encrypted networks.

I found out that the reason the original driver I've been using with ndiswrapper (the "bcmwl6.inf" file) isn't compatible with ndiswrapper because it is a Vista driver.

The one you recommended for me that works on all wireless networks besides WPA/WPA2 was the "bcmwl5.inf". After searching around on Dell's driver website, I found out that that's the XP driver for the same wireless card.

Does the fact that I'm using an XP driver affect why I can't connect to WPA/WPA2?

EDIT:
Just looked around ndiswrapper's website. I'm not sure what this page is explaining but could this solve my problem?
http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawik...itle=WPA_HowTo