Okay. I've got a DLINK wireless network card. I've downloaded the RALink rt61.inf
Driver for ndiswrapper, and installed it. When I type ifconfig -l it comes up as:-

rt61 driver installed, hardware present

So I know it's there, and installed. But here's the thing - I CANNOT get onto the internet, even with the hardware present, ive seriously tried everything and if I dont get it to work this time i'm going back to Windows. It would be disappointing, every time I try linux its great but ONE thing wont work, and i can never ever solve that one problem.

I open up System -> Network Device Control and configure (wlan0) - My ndiswrapper interface. Then press activate. and it always comes back with:-

Determining IP information for wlan0...
(FOR AGES)
Then comes up with:- Determining IP information for wlan0...failed.

I try setting it to Auto, Managed, Ad-Hoc, ALL of them, and I get the same error message. Why the hell would it fail? I followed all the instructions and have no idea why it's not working. I plug in ethernet, and activate it.. and it just gives me an IP address, but this is just not working at all.

I open up Kwifimanager, press "Scan For Networks" and it actually FINDS my Home network - I can see it, It says (From left to right)

Network Name - Home
Mode-
Quality- 0
WEP - On (Why does it say on?! My network isn't secured, its open!!!)

I select my home network and hit "Switch to network" And it gives me this error message:
'Aborting network switching due to invalid WEP key specification'

Once again, I dont even have WEP TURNED ON! GRR

Here's some information on my system that might be able to help you give me the solution i need:

Output of iwconfig:-

[root@localhost ~]# iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

sit0 no wireless extensions.

Warning: Driver for device wlan0 has been compiled with version 20
of Wireless Extension, while this program supports up to version 19.
Some things may be broken...

wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"Home" Nickname:"localhost.localdomain"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: 00:0F:3D:28:C2:8B
Bit Rate=54 Mb/s Tx-Power:20 dBm Sensitivity=-121 dBm
RTS thr=2347 B Fragment thr=2346 B
Encryption keyff
Power Managementff
Link Quality:100/100 Signal level:-54 dBm Noise level:-256 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

[root@localhost ~]#

Output of uname -r

[root@localhost ~]# uname -r
2.6.17-1.2174_FC5
[root@localhost ~]#

Output of Ifconfig

[root@localhost ~]# ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0D:569:21:19
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
Base address:0xdf40 Memory:feae0000-feb00000

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:2141 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:2141 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:2327763 (2.2 MiB) TX bytes:2327763 (2.2 MiB)

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:15:E9:427:3D
inet6 addr: fe80::215:e9ff:fe42:d73d/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:28 errors:0 dropped:2 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:7992 (7.8 KiB)
Interrupt:177 Memory:fead8000-feae0000

Output of Lspci -v

(I left out irrelevant information, this is my card, cos it disappears from the list when I take it out)

01:08.0 Network controller: RaLink Unknown device 0302
Subsystem: D-Link System Inc Unknown device 3c09
Flags: bus master, slow devsel, latency 64, IRQ 177
Memory at fead8000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32K]
Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2


So what gives? Why can't I get online? I hope someone will be able to help me
PS. I've also tried Madwifi Drivers, and they didn't work either - did the same thing, they BOTH came up with driver installed, hardware present. did exactly the same thing.

I've got the native linux driver, but it was in a gx.tar or something and i have no freaking idea on how to install THAT.
PS dont add this post to my other one like last time. Other people started asking questions and it got offtopic and i never got any help Thanks in advance guys (n girls)

Check your output of This is what the error gives you back.
So all versions of Wireless Tools up to version 26 need to be compiled for the precise version of Wireless Extension present on the system. Starting with Wireless Tools 27, Wireless Tools can handle multiple versions of Wireless Extension without recompile.
The Wireless Extensions and Wireless Tools version numbers will not match with each other. The Wireless Tools and the Wireless Extensions (the underlying API) evolve independantly of each other. The command iwconfig --version gives you the detail of your setup.
Compilation of the Wireless Tools used to be tricky, especially in the header area. I believe this has been fixed for good.
For kernels before 2.2.14/2.3.30, use Wireless Tools version 19.
For kernel after 2.2.14/2.3.30 use Wireless Tools version 20 or greater.
For kernel after 2.6.13 use Wireless Tools version 27 or greater.
The tools and the wireless library are GPL.
In the old time, you could upgrade Wireless Extensions by just changing wireless.h. Starting with Wireless Extensions v12, this is no longer true, you need to apply the full patch to the kernel.

My output of iwconfig --version is:-

iwconfig
Wireless-Tools version 28
Compatible with Wireless Extension v11 to v19

Kernel
Currently compiled with Wireless Extension v20

Wlan0
Recommended Wireless Extension v18 or later,
Currently compiled with Wireless Extension v20

^^^

To be totally honest I've got absoloultley no idea what you are talking about, it sounds too complicated to resolve this problem. Do you have simple step-by-step instructions? :S

Wireless Complied with whaT? Isnt there something I can just download install and make everything all better?

Hello? .............

Download from here

extract the file
cd into it
follow the INSTALL Guide.

Oh umm okay.
That didn't solve my problem though.
I wanted to get onto the network. It's doing exactly the same thing as before, just without the
'Warning: Driver for device wlan0 has been compiled with version 20
of Wireless Extension, while this program supports up to version 19.
Some things may be broken...' ERROR

How do I get it to work? Unfuckingbelievable. Ive downloaded at least 20 things to get this wireless card working and it still won't. No wonder everyones on Windows

So your hardware is as an alias in /etc/modprobe.conf ?
And in the network setup you're able to configure it right?
You say your WLAN is open. Which brand of router do you got?
And you don't have to test ADHOC or AUTO if it's managed.
You also don't have to test DHCP if there is none running on your router or does one run on it?
You say you can't connect to the internet. If its a router. It will have it's own IP and if it doesn't block ICMP Packages you should be able to pin git if you configure your wireless card with static IP. So you only will have to setup your SSID.
For e.g. router has dhcp off, open no encryption, and it's ip is 192.168.2.1, ssid testwlan - then your wlan0 should have configured
static 192.168.2.2 255.255.255.0 Gateway 192.168.2.1 and DNS 192.168.2.1, wireless tab ssid testwlan.

I am wondering that your post shows

Yes.

Configure, yes.. connect, no.

D-Link DI-524 Router, i'm sure it's got DHCP on it, because all our windows computers obtain an IP via DHCP.

I already tried to setup a static IP, and ping the router (192.168.0.1) and I get Destination Host Unreachable. So yeah..
It wont work no matter what I try.
What can I do to make it work! Any more ideas.

I also encounter the same problem but not for every access point. My card is also from D-Link, DWL-630. It connects successfully at my home totally to my 2 APs (802.11g), but not to some APs in the school library(802.11b & g).

I'm a beginner in using Linux, so my suggestion may not be helpful.
But, have you tried to issue iwevent to see what the card has done?

When my card fails to connect to an AP, firstly the LED signals on the card is very strange. The signal sequence shows the card is "finding APs, connected, finding APs, connected...". Secondly the iwevent would show only "Scan request completed", but not try to connect.

I guess there are some parameters for an AP I didn't set on my card, so it fails for some APs and all the APs are using no encryption, same essid and DHCP.

1. Try iwevent
2. See if it related to 802.11b or g