Problem with ndiswrapper ( driver present, but it doesnt say anything about hw ? )
 

So I recently was given a Belkin f5d7011 wireless G notebook adapter. I went over to our friends @ ndiswrapper and installed version 1.4. I went through their list of compatible devices and installed the driver they have listed.

I did NOT recompile my kernel w/ the 4k stack option turned off... I have tried modprobing ndiswrapper, and it loads and does not cause a system crash. However, the adapter does not work and wlanassistant does not recognise the device.


here are the steps i've taken so far

] su -
] ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf
Installing bcmwl5
Forcing parameter IBSSGMode | 0 to IBSSGMode | 2
Forcing parameter IBSSGMode | 0 to IBSSGMode | 2
Forcing parameter IBSSGMode | 0 to IBSSGMode | 2
Forcing parameter IBSSGMode | 0 to IBSSGMode | 2
Forcing parameter IBSSGMode | 0 to IBSSGMode | 2
Forcing parameter IBSSGMode | 0 to IBSSGMode | 2
Forcing parameter IBSSGMode | 0 to IBSSGMode | 2
Forcing parameter IBSSGMode | 0 to IBSSGMode | 2
Forcing parameter IBSSGMode | 0 to IBSSGMode | 2
Forcing parameter IBSSGMode | 0 to IBSSGMode | 2
] ndiswrapper -l
bcmwl5 driver present



the lights on my network card do not ever turn on or anything, I'm thinking maybe the card is not being initialized or something?

Here is the output of lspci -v

02:00.0 Network Controller: Broadcom Corporation: Unknown device 4318 ( rev 02)
Subsystem: Belkin: Unknown device 7011
Flags: fast devsel, IRQ 11
Memory at 0f800000 ( 32-bit, non-prefetchable) [disabled] [size=8k]


Any ideas?

wlan card not recognized
 

hello,

First of all, please note:
I use a PC, not a notebook;
I'm using ndiwrapper version 1.2;
I'm not a developer, so I don't know how it works by me, but it does.

Try to install the kernel sources of your distribution! That's what I did and it goes.
(Are there special options to be toggled in the notebook's system bios?)
May be this is stupid, but sorry, as I sayed: I'm not a developper.

Hopefully this works on your card too!

idefix

Since you've gotten this far, the kernel sources aren't the issue.

I'm going to hazard a guess that the driver you have isn't quite right, despite the link from ndiswrapper. There is also a bcmwl5a driver that you might try.

That would be my guess as well. Seems that any time I've seen a "driver present" without the "hardware present" statement it's a driver issue. I'd try another driver.

I agree. I have wlan working on my computer, and get the following output from ndiswrapper:
I obviously have another card, but the output from ndiswrapper should still show both hardware and driver present. I did not use the drivers found at the ndiswrapper site, but downloaded the driver straight from the card manufacturers website.

Good luck!

hurrah! I got it up and running now...but it appears that I need to upgrade my version of wireless extentions. It's saying:

Warning: Driver for device wlan0 recommend version 18 of Wireless Extentions, but has been compiled with version 17, therefore some driver features may not be available.

will this cause me to loose connectivity? It seems I loose connection to the network after about 5 minutes or so; then i have to reconnect. I can reconnect 2 or 3 times thne i have to reboot my system to get it to work again.

It might be that you have more than one version installed and they are causing conflicts. See if you can't find out and remove the old one.

I bet you've got a 2.6.13 kernel running. There is a new version of wireless extenstions in that kernel that the existing stable wireless tools doesn't support yet. You're either going to have to go to an older kernel or download and compile a version of wireless tools that supports the 2.6.13 kernel.