My father and I recently bought a new Acer Aspire 5570-something. (He's using it right now, so you'll have to bear with me until he's off and I can get better details.) I was so unhappy with Vista that I couldn't wait to put Ubuntu 7.04 on it.

But when I did, it wouldn't recognize the wireless network. Wired works fine, but I can't manage to get the wireless going. It works fine in Vista (Or at least as fine as anything can be expected to work in history's most underwhelming operating system)

I've seen some things about this model being weird with that, but none of the solutions seemed to work. The laptop boasted SignalUP technology, which seems to be basically having the antenna in the top of the screen. Could this have anything to do with it? Where can I find a driver for this? How would I install it?

I've used Ubuntu a little before, on an old Toshiba that's power connector broke recently (thus the new laptop). It worked like a charm, I never had any difficulties with drivers, thus my surprise when this didn't work.

System Specs:
Pentium Dual-core @1.73 GHz
1GB RAM
80GB HD, split into 3 partitions:

1)"ACER": Holds Vi$ta and Windoze info
2)Ubuntu partition. The laptop shipped with this as a secondary data partition; I re-did it for Linux
3)Factory-installed recovery partition. Oddly enough, this has XP on it. So when I see the boot menu, I get Ubuntu, Ubuntu safe mode, Vista, and XP. I tried it out, hoping to get a functioning edition, but it seems to have been hacked by the factory to only work for recovery. As an aside, does anyone know if this can be made functioning?

Welcome to LQ!

This link from TubMobil might help.

Not to be rude, but you should really learn to use <Linux> Google and some other searches ... this Forum and perhaps any Ubuntu forums.

In case you haven't seen it, How To Ask Questions The Smart Way is well worth reading.

Here's the first paragraph:

If you have the time, this article is, IMO, well worth a read.

If you don't have the time, and you still want to get questions answered by the hacker volunteers who man free software projects, then you really should make the time anyway and read this article.

Also, you'll probably notice that no one can really help you much when you're not accessing the computer with the problem.

I've already seen that link, and since it claims the wireless works straight out of the box, it doesn't offer any help if it doesn't work.

I apologize for not giving more complete info. Here's everything on the sticker:

Aspire 5570-2977
*Intel Pentium dual-corre processor T2080
(1.73GHz, 533 MHz FSB, 1 MB L2 cache)
*14.1"WXGA Acer CrystalBrite LCD
*Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950
*80 GB HDD (details on partitions in first post)
*DVD-Super Multi DL
*1GB DDR2
*802.11b/g WLAN


Then in the next column it has some info about pre-installed software, and one point that says:
*Acer SignalUp* High-efficiency antenna technology
*Specifications vary by model

On the bottom, what looks like an FCC compliance sticker is titled Atheros AR5BXB63


When I boot up, I don't get any error messages or anything, but Ubuntu doesn't seem to see that the wireless card is there. I've tried the switch on the front, but no light comes on and nothing else happens.


And, by the way, I scoured Google for hours before coming here. Nothing applied to my problem or computer. I had no idea a Linux Google existed, but I will go try it out.

First of all, what kind of wireless card do you have?
manufacture,model?

You are giving Windows specs in a Linux forum. This does not tell us much about your hardware. If you can boot your Linux OS again, issue as root "lspci" and post the output here. That will tell us the Linux chipsets your OS found. Use VBCode so your output is human readable -- we're not machines.

Did you even search here at LQ for your laptop? I think not, or you'd have found another post; which I did by entering "Acer Aspire 5570-2977". Here's another useful link for those who post without searching.

The Acer website for PanAmerica doesn't even list the model number you posted. You didn't put your location in your UserCP, so I'm guessing you're an American from your use of English.

So, you can start reading those other links I gave you to learn about Linux, or pray someone else shows up to play "20 Questions" with you, or search here and read and follow the other thread's useful advice.

The 'real' model series would just be Aspire 5570. Any other digits, numbers, etc aren't relevant (e.g. "-2977" isn't relevant) or useful at the moment.

This just means your laptop has two wireless antennas - one going up the left of the screen, one up the right. This has no bearing whatsoever on the drivers.

You have an Atheros wireless chipset - you will need the Madwifi wireless drivers - AFAIK, you will need to download and install these yourself.