The internet on my Slackware worked perfectly for a good amount of time however now it's having issues. Many times my wireless card will not pick up any networks available but other PCs on the network seem to work fine on it. Once again, the internet was working fine but now it isn't even though I have changed *nothing* :s When I load it in an Ubuntu liveCD it picks up the network fine so it leads me to believe it IS a software issue. My Slackware doesn't pick any up unless I restart say three or four times it seems.

What do you mean by "my wireless card will not pick up any networks available" ?

1) What is your card's interface ? "iwconfig" will tell you. For now let's suppose it's wlan0.
2) Can you see the available networks ? "iwlist wlan0 scan" will tell you.
3) If yes, how do do you pick up a network ? manually with ifconfig ? with the "/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 start" ? with wicd ?

It is wlan0 and I use wicd. I'm not having the problem at the moment so I can't check with iwlist wlan0 scan to test but I do know with wicd it did not pickup the networks when it doesn't work.

I have read that for wicd to work properly you should make sure that all settings in /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf stay commented -- but I guess you already checked that.

And make sure that you got rid of /etc/rc.d/rc.wireless.conf which is now useless (I simply renamed mine rc.wireless.conf.no).

I can't help you with wicd's settings as I don't use it.

Okay I checked everything and it still doesn't work. Here's what we got-
1. I use wlan0
2. "iwlist wlan0 scan" - just returns "Interface doesn't support scanning"
3. I am using wicd to connect
4. /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf is commented out
5. I have renamed my /etc/rc.d/rc.wireless.conf to rc.wireless.conf.no

Still not working, again just to people know, my wireless did work fine for a long time. I have changed nothing when it stopped working however it works fine in any live CDs and will occasionally work in my Slackware install just not maybe 90% of the time which does sound like a software issue, mostly since it works fine with any live CDs.

When the wireless fails, check and see if your wireless driver is still running with lsmod.
You could also try reloading the driver when your wireless fails:
Then see if wicd can connect. If this helps, then it is likely a driver issue I would think.

Then clearly wlan0 is not the good interface name for you wireless card. Type 'iwconfig' to get the good one. If none found, then tommcd is right, the relevant driver for you card is not loaded.

[EDIT] Try 'lspci -k|grep -i -A 3 network' to find out driver in use (if any) and module names for your wireless card.

Yeah it is DEFINITELY wlan0, and now I have a weird problem. It says I'm connected to the network with ifconfig and iwconfig but I still can't do anything with the internet and wicd still doesn't pickup any networks even though I'm connected. I'm even on a computer right now linked wirelessly to the same router.

My output from is 'lspci -k|grep -i -A 3 network' RaLink RT2561/RT61 802.11g PCI
Subsystem: RaLink EW-7108PCg
Kernel driver in use rt61pci
Kernel modules": rt61pci

Just tried rmmod rt61pci and modprobe rt61pci and it works fine. Now how do I do this for whenever I start up to prevent this problem in the future??? Or does that already completely fix it?

Using rc.inet1.conf your wireless will automatically start when the system runs the rc.inet1 script. Try setting up your wireless that way instead of using wicd, if it works then you know it's a settings problem with wicd. I don't use wicd though so I'm not able to give any help on it's configuration or troubleshooting.

Okay, NOW it's having the same problem again and not even seeing wlan0 like before :s, I tried the rmmod and modprobe and nothing. Have not changed anything since it was last working.

Hm... I MAY have figured it out? Okay after running 'lspci -k|grep -i -A 3 network' again when it was having that problem it actually brought up something different. It brought up a multimedia broadcaster right after it brought up my wireless card and had a driver for saa7130 and it said the saa7134 was being used. Well the saa713* is for my tv tuner card that I never used so I figured it could be conflicting for some reason. I don't know but I took the TV tuner card out and so far it's working fine but I guess since it's an issue that's been having issues only on occasion I guess I really won't know for a while but it does seem like it's a possibility.