i recently got a micron laptop with linux 2.6.33.2, and whenever i try to access my wireless network it comes up "failed to obtain access point to network". but all my friends can connect to it fine. any ideas as to what to do? thank you

What method are you using to try to connect? Are you using Network Manager? Is the access point using encryption? If you can, temporarily disable encryption and see if it connects. If it does, then that narrows down the problem.(Maybe poor or missing wpa2 support)

It might be a better idea to just download a new Linux ISO of your choice. That kernel is a couple of years old now. A newer kernel will most likely support your wireless hardware better + have more updated software.


Post back with some more details, and we can offer you more help.

IonBolt makes a good point.

If you need to stick with that distribution for whatever reason, look into the type of wireless card you have.

lspci command will tell you what you need to know.

Some manufacturers do not provide open source drivers for their hardware.

If that is the case, look into ndis newswrapper, which will slice the firmware from commercial drivers and make your card work. (I did not have good luck with it, but was able to get a Wifi card compatible with Linux for $20).

Hope this helps.

Try getting some live DVDs or CDs downloaded and see if another distro can get online.

I have a HP dv8040us Pavilion notebook and cannot get Ubuntu to recognize the wireless router of at&t at my home, or other places. Sometimes the wireless seems to be turned on but the light indication the connection is on does not light up. Can someone tell me how to get the operating system to recognize the wireless router, etc. I cannot find a drive for the HP notebook on the Linux site. There has to be some way to fix this. This Ubuntu download is downloaded as a double boot where I also have Win XP. If I can figure out how to use Linux, then I will do a full install of the 64 bit Ubuntu op. sys. Until then I don't want to ruin the computer operating system that I have. Any help would be appreciated.

I have an HP dv2010 Pavilion Laptop and also have grief with WiFi thanks to the "low power" Brodcom chipset that HP selected.
I ended up having to use the windows driver with ndis wraper. The problem with this "fix" is that occasionally a windows update will break the wraper.
Hope that helps.

So you are operating Windows and Linux on the same machine, I take it. I would suggest making Linux your primary OS and running windows as a virtual machine. It's pretty easy to do that, kind of fun, and is becoming industry practice. Cheers!