Hello all, its nice to be back again.

I have a new Dell Inspiron 2200 with Dell 1370 WLAN PCMCIA card but it is disabled by default.

I am running the newest Knoppix from DVD and am not able to get the network card going at all.

I have tried to use ndiswrapper to install the driver for it but after I do that I am always getting the error "no NIC found" or some such thing like that? I know it is probably something simple to fix. I run Knoppix on my ancient HP laptop and everything works great, but not on the new one.

I open up the wificonfig utility and it always says that the card is disabled and I don't know how to enable it

Thank you for the help in advance,

Loren

Moved: This thread is more suitable in Wireless Networking and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

Once you have loaded the ndiswrapper driver, do you see any error messages at the end of the output when you run dmesg?

Good morning

This morning I tried to install the "correct" driver for my card via ndiswrapper but when I use ndiswrapper -l it tells me that these are the incorrect drivers. Hmmmm

dmesg runs a list of things but I am thinking that the interesting line here is "eth0: e100_probe: addr 0xdfdfd000: irq 20: mac addr 00:14:22:B5:A9:87" I don't know exactly what this means but I am thinking that the card is at least recognized.

Also when I shut Knoppix down, one of the lines appear in the shutdown sequence is "stopping eth0" or something of that nature which would also lead me to believe that the card will work.

I open up kwifimanager to try to adjust settings but the gui shows that there is a question mark over an icon and it also states that it is "disabled".

I look in the device manager in XP and it tells me that I have a Dell 1370 WLAN minipci card. But the drivers that I found that are suppose to work with that specific card are wrong for some reason.

Thanks again for the help,

The eth0 card is probably a wired ethernet. Can you post the output from:
lspci
lsmod
modprobe ndiswrapper
ndiswrapper -l
dmesg | tail

Make sure the card is enabled in BIOS - Fn-F2 on Dell machines.

Good afternoon,

I want to thank everyone on the forums for the help. Mostly from surfing around and actually reading something.

I am now surfing this fine site with my newly activated wireless card on my Dell.

I ended up doing some searches on Google and other linux sites and found a few different things to try. Mostly different drivers that should work with my card. I used ndiswrapper and loaded the files bcmwl5.inf, bcmwl5.sys and bcml5a.inf. I found these files on an obscure site that had just those files that I needed. I had to fiddle around with some of the other settings obviously to set up my home network and WEP, but after all was said and done I am up and running.

thanks again for the help,

Greetings, newbie here. System>Admin>Restricted Drivers Manager says it is using a proprietary driver. I tried accessing BIOS but Network interfaces were all enabled by default.

My output:

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

eth1 unassociated ESSID:off/any
Mode:Managed Frequency=nan kHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Bit Rate:0 kb/s Tx-Power:16 dBm
Retry limit:15 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:121 Missed beacon:0

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo iwconfig eth0 down
iwconfig: unknown command "down"
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo ifconfig eth0 down
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo ifconfig eth1 up
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 Memory Controller Hub (rev 0c)
[...]
03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)
04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetLink BCM5787M Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 02)
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ lsmod
Module Size Used by
[...]
ipw3945 119840 1
[...]
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ modprobe ndiswrapper
FATAL: Error inserting ndiswrapper (/lib/modules/2.6.22-14-generic/ubuntu/misc/ndiswrapper/ndiswrapper.ko): Operation not permitted
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo modprobe ndiswrapper
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ ndiswrapper -l
The program 'ndiswrapper' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing:
sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper-common
bash: ndiswrapper: command not found
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper-common
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Suggested packages:
ndiswrapper-source
The following NEW packages will be installed:
ndiswrapper-common
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/19.2kB of archives.
After unpacking 106kB of additional disk space will be used.
Selecting previously deselected package ndiswrapper-common.
(Reading database ... 92004 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking ndiswrapper-common (from .../ndiswrapper-common_1.43-1ubuntu2_all.deb) ...
Setting up ndiswrapper-common (1.43-1ubuntu2) ...
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ ndiswrapper -l
Error: no ndiswrapper utils found!
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ locate ndiswrapper
locate: warning: database /var/lib/slocate/slocate.db' is more than 8 days old
/lib/modules/2.6.22-14-generic/ubuntu/misc/ndiswrapper
/lib/modules/2.6.22-14-generic/ubuntu/misc/ndiswrapper/ndiswrapper.ko
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ ls /lib/modules/2.6.22-14-generic/ubuntu/misc/ndiswrapper
ndiswrapper.ko
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ dmesg | tail
[ 102.968000] Bluetooth: L2CAP ver 2.8
[ 102.968000] Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized
[ 103.008000] Bluetooth: RFCOMM socket layer initialized
[ 103.008000] Bluetooth: RFCOMM TTY layer initialized
[ 103.008000] Bluetooth: RFCOMM ver 1.8
[ 113.072000] [drm] Initialized drm 1.1.0 20060810
[ 113.112000] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:02.0[A] -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 20
[ 113.112000] [drm] Initialized i915 1.6.0 20060119 on minor 0
[ 508.824000] ndiswrapper version 1.45 loaded (smp=yes)
[ 508.828000] usbcore: registered new interface driver ndiswrapper
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ ndiswrapper -l
Error: no ndiswrapper utils found!

Where to start?

* Don't add to an old thread that has nothing to do with your problem. Start a new one with a descriptive title

* State the problem or ask a question. All you did was post a list of things you poked at.

* Why are you trying to use NDISwrapper? You have an Intel wireless card and the native driver is included in recent Ubuntu releases.

* lsmod shows that the ipw3945 module is loaded. Is the firmware installed?

* Did you try to set the wireless parameters- SSID, for example - using either iwconfig or a GUI?
Try: sudo iwconfig eth1 essid <your_ssid>

* Are you using WEP or WPA? If so, use: sudo iwconfig eth1 key 123456whatever. If WPA, make sure wpa_supplicant is installed and use Network Manager to configure it (after you get it working with no security).

Thanks. Is there a proper way to move this thread? Anyway, I have the following and tried entering the SSID and WEP. Available networks show up correctly on scans, but it still does not connect.

It seems to have the ieee80211 subsystem and the ipw3945.ko module and firmware files:

/lib/modules/2.6.22-14-generic/ubuntu/wireless/ipw3945/ipw3945.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.22-14-generic/ubuntu/wireless/rtl8180/rtl_ieee80211
/lib/firmware/2.6.22-14-generic/ipw3945.ucode

It also has wpa_supplicant, but $wpa_passphrase [ssid] stalls with:

# reading passphrase from stdin

After entering the SSID and WEP key, I got a different iwconfig output:

eth1 unassociated ESSID:"2WIRE260"
Mode:Managed Frequency=nan kHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Bit Rate:0 kb/s Tx-Power:16 dBm
Retry limit:15 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:2293 Missed beacon:0

Any ideas for next steps?

Does it work without security? If not, fix that first. Does the client associate with the AP? Can you pull an IP address?

For the WEP setup:

The SSID change took, but the client card is not associated with the network. Most likely, a setting error. Use a hex key at both ends, type carefully - it has to match exactly. Remember, the router has to have the same hex key. Don't use a passphrase.

For WPA:

The symptoms point to a setup issue, again. How are you configuring for WPA? Are you using PSK with TKIP or AES? Do the router settings match the client?