Hi,

I am trying to install my centrino wireless card - the intel pro wireless 2100 -. I tried both, ndiswrapper and ipw2100 drivers but none of them worked.

Here comes my 2 problems:

1. Using the ipw2100 drive I make $modprobe ipw2100 and no problem appears when i make $dmesg. The wireless LED of my laptop turns on and seems to work ok but when i try to connect to any wireless by $ifup eth2 after a minute it says :

$ifup eth2
Determining IP information for eth2... failed.

but in windows i have no problem to connect.

Here is what i get doing iwconfig:

eth2 unassociated ESSIDff/any Nickname:"unit0"
Mode:Managed Channel=0 Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00
Bit Rate=0 kb/s Tx-Powerff
Retryn RTS thrff Fragment thrff
Encryption keyff
Power Managementff
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

2. The other problem comes when i try to use NdisWrapper. I have downloaded the latest drivers of intel pro wireless 2100 for windows...
i make:
$ndiswrapper -i path/of/driver.inf
$modprobe ndiswrapper
$iwconfig eth2

eth2 IEEE 802.11b ESSIDff/any Nickname:"unit0"
Mode:Managed Channel:0 Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00
Bit Rate=11 Mb/s
RTS thr=1600 B Fragment thr=2344 B
Encryption keyff
Power Managementff
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

But wireless LED does not turn on... and if I try

$ifup eth2
Determining IP information for eth2... failed.


I suppose that when I load the driver with ndiswrapper it doesn't turn on the wireless card so that is why the LED is off. Does anyone know some way to turn it on manually or if I have to do anything more when I use ipw2100 driver??

My laptop is one of the first centrinos - a 1.5 Ghz - I think that it could be too old for that drivers because I have read a lot in other forums and seems there is no way to make it work properly.



Thanks to all.

Ok... you want to use the native linux driver, not the ndiswrapper driver.

Lets start small, with the ipw2100 driver installed can you do an iwlist eth2 scan?

Can you associate your wireless card with the access point?

iwconfig eth2 essid <insert-your-ap-ssid-here>

Now, if those both work that means you a) have the driver install correctly, and b) have the right firmware loaded.

Then the next question is... do you have WEP or WPA on your wireless network?