Hi,

I am trying to use WiFi on a laptop.

Details: Dell Inspiron 8100 with SMC2632W.

Distro: Kanotix, latest

Good News 1st:

There is an "ULTIMATE" signal, and scanning for networks does find my wireless network. The access point is a DWL-700AP and its MAC address is found.

The Bad News is that there is no connectivity. Also KWiFiManager complains that my AccessPoint is UNKNOWN even after finding my wireless network! There is no IP address assigned.

Encryption is 26-digit hex WEP.
Operation Mode is set to "Manager" becase the other settings seem to kill the signal.

The [Autodetect] button was used for the Interface. It came back with "eth2".

The same hardware works fine in WinXP.

Any clues as to what is wrong?

Thanks,

Mark

Although Kwifimanager is a nice program, it is, IMO, not so helpful for diagnosing what is going wrong. I would try to get things working in a terminal, then use it for monitoring your connection.

First, switch off encryption and MAC-address filtering on your WAP. Once wireless is working, you can switch that stuff back on if you need it. Then reset the interface:
$sudo ifconfig eth2 down
$sudo ifconfig eth2 up

Try connecting to your WAP:
$ sudo iwconfig eth2 essid <your essid> key off

Then type iwconfig by itself. If you are successful, it should indicate that it has attached itself to your WAP by displaying its MAC address and signal strength. Then get a DHCP lease:
$ sudo dhclient eth2

If you are assigned an IP number, the connection should now be active, and you should be able to ping remote hosts:
$ ping google.com

If you start Kwifimanager now, it should display the details of your connection. Note: If it displays UKNOWN in the bottom left, you have to add your WAP's MAC address to the list of recognized hosts. See the manual on how to do this. This should not affect its operation though.

HTH