USB netgear stick & my laptop - do I use WINE? ndiswrapper?
 

recently i installed linux onto my laptop. problem is my wireless card is burnt up, so i have a usb stick adt to detect the wireless but of corse its a windows program. i am able to run it with wine, but as soon as it starts setup , installshield wizard pops up,runs almost to the end and then says :

Unable to load
and something install help.dll.

I have no idea waht to do or if its even possible it is a netgear usb adaptor any ideas please???

Post make and model of adapter someone here will know.
You may be able to install from your package manager.

You may not have to use wine for network adapter.

Welcome to LQ!

Make and model would help greatly. Also, most people here ignore generic sounding threads like "help".

Wine almost certainly won't help. Sometimes, though, you can get Windows wireless drivers to run using ndiswrapper. It's better to find and use a native Linux driver, if one exists.

it is a netgear wireless-n150 usb and wna1100 is the other number
thanks

What distribution of Linux are you using? What version? Is your system 32 bit or 64 bit?

Some answers might be found here. They recommend using ndiswrapper. The .inf file might have been extracted for you by wine. Otherwise, you may need a Windows installation to unpack it.

There's another recent LQ thread covering the same piece of hardware here. There's no solution there yet, but I recommend subscribing the their thread, just in case.

64 bit and nothing changed with the ndiswrapper

from reading similar problems they are saying to add this code:
sudo modprobe ndiswrapper
but like i said i am very new to this linux and unsure of how to even do this???

before i do anything i would like to hear suggestions im very slow when it comes to computers and i just want to get this usb wireless adt working

with wine i was able to open the cd and start installing
it gets to the very end then pops up and says :

unable to load
c:\users\tyson\Temp\{C5A5E3E9-AE78-B99D-2362A1967C23}\{A2AE9709-283B-4B48-AA34-729C070A62FB}\InstallHelper.dll.

so very lost
thanks

See if you can find a LUG (Linux User's Group) in your area (use Google). These will be the sorts of people who can help you in person.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not real familiar with Linux wireless or ndiswrapper. I know there are many resources on the Internet that will help. It can be a bit of a needle-in-a-haystack problem. There's probably a graphical tool already installed for configuring ndiswrapper. If not, some of these might help make things a little easier.

The 'lsmod' command will tell you all the kernel drivers (modules) that are running. 'sudo modprobe ndiswrapper' will load and run the ndiswrapper driver, assuming it is properly configured. That will only last until the machine is rebooted. Then, it will either be loaded automatically, or you'll need to add a startup hook somewhere (such as in /etc/rc.local). We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

I'm sorry I can't be great help on this issue. I'll do what I can.

Hello, struttthatstuff, gd2shoe (*poke*), and all.

In case this link hasn't already been posted, here's a great ndiswrapper guide:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/...Ultimate_Guide

What version of Linux are you using? Ubuntu? Debian? Slackware? Fedora? Suse? There are a LOT of them, so if you're not sure, please post the output of this command (in a terminal window):

Most likely (depending on your distribution), this will tell you the full name and version of the Linux distribution you are using. We will need this information in order to help you with the more specific details of how to get your wireless stick to work. If that command gives you an error, post that error here, and also give us the output of this command:

That will help us to figure out which distro you're using if the first command doesn't help.

The link I gave you is specific to Ubuntu, so there are probably some commands/steps in it that won't work unless you are using Ubuntu (preferably a very recent version of it). There are, however some very generic tips that I can give you about how ndiswrapper works, that you may find helpful.

1) Ndiswrapper is a sort of "container" for Windows drivers (.inf, .sys, and sometimes .bin files) that will tell the Linux kernel how to understand what the driver is trying to do, and how it's supposed to do it.

2) Instead of loading the Windows driver directly with something like 'modprobe myhardwaredriver.inf', you will need to "encase" the Windows driver in Ndiswrapper and load Ndiswrapper (using something like 'modprobe ndiswrapper') with the Windows driver inside it. This is what most instructions and HOW-TOs on the subject focus on.

3) WINE will most likely be of NO HELP WHATSOEVER. WINE is just a compatability layer that allows the Linux kernel, libraries (such as all the .so files in /usr/lib), and executables (like what is in /usr/bin) to communicate with Windows libraries and executables, such as files ending in ".dll" or ".exe". The Windows program, such as a game or office application, will ask the operating system (which it thinks is Windows) for somelibrary.dll, and expect that library to do certain things, a certain way. WINE basically acts as a translater for those programs, fetching equivilent functionality from the Linux system, and translating that functionality into "Windows language." The problem with using this for a driver, is that the driver needs to work directly with the Linux kernel (possibly through a wrapper, such as Ndiswrapper), whereas anything you run with WINE is NOT ALLOWED to work directly with the Linux kernel. WINE will, in that case, just get in the way.

4) All that being said about WINE, there is one possible use for it when installing Windows drivers, only if you can't do this using native Linux tools: if the driver files come packed in a .msi, .exe, or some other Windows-specific package, then, in some cases, you can use WINE to decompress that package so that you can get to the files inside of it. This is usually a hassle, involving finding the temporary directory where Windows/WINE stores the decompressed files during installation, somehow making sure they aren't deleted when the program/package file stops running, and then sifting through all the mess to find what you want. Sometimes, WINE can't even run the package files properly, as you seem to be experiencing. ONLY ATTEMPT THIS METHOD AS A LAST RESORT! It really is a pain, and there are much less painful methods of getting to most Windows-packaged files, such as cabextract, unshield, unzip, unrar, etc., all of which work natively (properly) in Linux on almost all Windows driver packages. In fact, WINE usually uses these tools to extract stuff anyway.

5) Once you are able to get Ndiswrapper to load the driver into the Linux kernel, you will need to somehow make it load at startup, when you boot up your machine. There are several methods for doing this, which we can talk about when we know what distro you're using.

Here is another thread that deals specifically with your device (again, on Ubuntu). You should pay special note to the chip(s) that your device uses, as they are much more important to getting Ndiswrapper and the device to work than the product's brand or model number. In this case, a Ralink 2870 chip is being used in the USB device, which required a native Linux driver (specifically, rt2800usb) to be "blacklisted" (disabled), so that it wouldn't keep trying to load its broken driver code and prevent Ndiswrapper from doing its job. In order to make sure we are looking at the right chip, here, please type the output of this terminal command, while you have the USB device plugged in (after having it plugged in for at least 10 seconds):

Or, if that doesn't work, try this:

This should tell you about all the USB devices currently attached to your computer. We will need this information to make sure we're trying the right steps for your device.

Hope that helps, and get back to us soon.

--Dane

DISTRIB_ID=LinuxMint
DISTRIB_RELEASE=10
DISTRIB_CODENAME=julia
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Linux Mint 10 Julia"
tyson@tyson-HP-Pavilion-dv6000-GL912UA-ABL

is that the info needed?

Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0846:9030 NetGear, Inc.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

and is this the right usb info

It's nice to see someone competent with wireless joining the conversation. ;)

Hello, and thanks gd2shoe. :-)

While poking around the Internet for your hardware ID, 0846:9030, I was able to determine from some other forums that your device most likely uses the Atheros ar9271 chip, which has a native Linux driver. (Good news!) The site that says so is here. This means that you will most likely NOT have to use ndiswrapper or any Windows-Linux funkiness to make your wifi stick work! As Linux Mint 10 "Julia" is very similar to (and based on) Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat", I'll give you some instructions based on my current Ubuntu installation that should work for you. Please note that I don't have the device you are using, so I will need you to post back and tell me how well these steps work.

1) Plug your USB WiFi device into your computer. Plug your laptop into your router/switch with an ethernet cable so that you can access the Internet from it.

2) Type the following into a terminal window (entering your user's password if prompted:

3) Make sure that the following Update sources are enabled:
-Important Security Updates
-Recommended Updates

4) Click on the "Close" button in the lower-right of that window and tell it to update/refresh its software sources when it asks you. If it does not ask you, (or if you just want to be certain it worked), do this in a terminal window:

5) Now that you have updated your package source lists, type this into the terminal to install the wireless drivers for your device:

NOTE: because "maverick" referrs to the Ubuntu version that your distribution is based on, it will probably work if typed exactly as written above. If it does not, however, you will need to experiment with replacing "maverick" with "julia", to reflect the version of Mint that you are using. If you still can't correctly guess the package name, then so a search for "linux-backports-modules-wireless-" in your package manager (probably Synaptic, which is in System > Administration in Ubuntu). Once you find it, install it. BE SURE TO GET THE ONE THAT DOES NOT SAY SOMETHING LIKE "linux-backports-modules-wireless-2.6.35-23-generic", AS IT WILL NOT UPDATE PROPERLY IF YOU DO A KERNEL UPDATE! There should be NO VERSION NUMBER in the NAME of the package (although there will be a version number in a different column/field in Synaptic).

6) You may need to reboot once you have finished installing this driver. If it doesn't work shortly after you install it, then please reboot with the device still in the USB port.

I hope that fixes it for you. Please let me know if you have any further problems, and post any errors you encounter.

--Dane

so i loaded a "linux-backports-modules-wireless-" then rebooted my computer and instead of login screen, a black screed came up saying :

Linux Mint 10 Julia tyson-HP-Pavilion-dv6000-GL912UA-ALB tty1tyson-HP-Pavilion-dv6000-GL912UA-ALB login:

so i put in my username then it asks for password and i do so, which then moves down to:

Welcome to Linux Mint
*Documentation: http://www.linuxmint.com
and an area to add codes???? what is this what do i do