Obtaining Netgear WN111 Wireless-N Adapter's Driver in Zip Format
 

I find it terribly diffficult to obtain the Netgear WN111 wireless-N adapter file in Zip format. I see only a .exe driver at www.netgear.com for the WN111.

I'll appreciate ang help from this forum.

julianvb

They don't seem to offer a linux driver. In linux the drivers usually are labeled for the chipset and not the actual model.

Linux may support it without a windows driver. See some of the ideas in this post. http://forum.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=69702

Dmesg should tell you the driver that it's requesting.

ar9170usb was replaced by carl9170
https://wiki.debian.org/carl9170

EDDY1,

When I enter 'sudo apt-get install firmware-Linux-free', Linux replies 'Unable to locate package firmware-Linux-free'.

julianvb

Try the "Additional Drivers" from your menu.
http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?ke...linux-firmware

EDDY1,

I'm sorry I am still at a loss. Thanks.

When I plug in a Linksys WUSB546G wireless adapter, it works right the way as it's Linux-compatible. Does it come with a Linux driver. Lsmod shows its driver rt37usb right after it's plugged in. I don't see rt37usb listed in /lib/modules/3.2.0-65-generic-pae/kernel/drivers/.

julianvb

That's a ralink driver, It's probably just 1 of the drivers that is automatically loaded or included in ubuntu. The driver for the other usb drive is in linux-firmware.

Hi, jefro and EDDY1,

I finally found the WN111's netmw245.inf file and was able to compile the driver with ndiswrapper. But the netmw245 directory shows netmw245.inf, MRVW245.sys, 07D1:3B10.F.conf, 0731:3B11.F.conf whereas the WN111's vendor-device code is 0846:9000. As of now, the adapter is not yet working since I don't see my network or any other networks.

If I rename one of the .conf files to 0846:9000.F.conf and try to activate the network, the adapter blinks for a while and then gives up.

What can I do to fix this porblem? Thanks.

julianvb

Ok in post #4 I suggested fiirmware-linux which is a package for debian, in Ubuntu the package is linux-firmware. Can you post the data from the usb requesting firmware in dmesg?

I've just submitted a reply together with a txt file. Everything is gone. What happened? I've just re-uploaded my txt file via 'Go Advanced' but it's still missing! I really hate to blanket this page with hundreds of lines from a long txt file.

I wish there were a webmaster around to help.

julianvb

I've just uploaded a .txt file but it's missing. I'm sorry that I can't just paste here the output of 'dmesg linux-firmware', which is over 40,000 characters long.

While my relative's laptop still fails to detect the WN111 external wireless adapter (with the internal one already blacklisted), the same driver installed the same way with Ndiswrapper allows the WN111 adapter to work on my own 2004 HP desktop computer. I think I no longer need to look for another suitable Windows .inf file for this adapter even though it's good to be familiar with available free Linux device drivers listed in Linux-firmware. I feel that I've installed the netmw245 driver properly since the WN111 adapter works on my desktop computer.

I also tend to suspect that there is something wrong with the laptop since the WN111 USB adapter fails to detect any wireless networks when it's mounted on the laptop.

My many thanks to EDDY1 and jefro.

julianvb
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EDDY1,

I want to apologize for ignoring your suggestion of using the ar9170.fw Linux firmware file. Today I came across this idea of hotplugging and understood Linux firmware a little more. I also found the following .fw files for the WN111v2 adapter (mine is the WN111v1) .

/lib/firmwar/ar9710.fw
/lib/firmware/ar9710-1.fw
/lib/firmware/ar9710-2.fw

In spite of the version difference, I would like to give the new approach a try. Can you give me an example in using .fw files in place of vendor-provided Windows drivers?

Thank yu very much.

julianvb

If you look at dmesg it tells you what you need
As root
or user

EDDY1,

Thanks for showing me a new approach, which does wake up the WN111v1 adapter. Now it blinks incessantly trying to do something after I executed your two-step procedure. I guess i've more work to do in making the connection. But at least I've something new to try.

julianvb