Hello,

I'm a first time user to linux, and I decided to go with the Ubuntu distro because I've heard good things about it and it seems pretty user friendly. I've been trying to configure my HP Pavilion ze4805us laptop to work with Ubuntu. The installation went flawlessly, everything works great, audio, video, mouse, etc. The only problem I'm having is with the wireless connection.

I've read through a bunch of posts on the Ubuntu forums on how to set up Ubuntu with Broadcom wireless cards as well as the ndiswrapper guide on the official site. I followed every step they gave down to the letter: did a fresh Ubuntu install, installed linux headers and build-essential, installed/compiled a fresh ndiswrapper-1.2, and loaded the correct drivers (BCM4306).

But when I run the "modprobe ndiswrapper" command to activate the module, it completely freezes my system, and I have to do a hard reboot. My wireless card works fine in Windows XP (I have it on dual boot). I've searched around the forums and I haven't seen anyone else with this problem yet. Thanks for taking the time to read this and any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

I'm not familiar with your distro, but I have seen the wireless wrappers requiring more than 4K stack size in the kernel depending on the driver family. I think a lot of the stock kernels are compiled using only a 4k kernel.
I'm not sure they support your distribution, but I would give the linuxant driverloader a whirl. They offer a free trial and they have a _VERY WELL DONE_ install process. The installer will also try to point you to the proper kernel if you are running the incorrect one. If you do want to stick with them, it's only $25 for the driver "license" and I believe it's a lifetime purchase. I've re installed several times and re-registered the driver (license is based on the mac address).

At the very least, you may be able to prove that the concept works on your hardware/driver/kernel combination. Then try again with the free wrapper you are using.

Thanks for the reply!

Yeah, I was reading something about the stack sizes at ndiswrapper's wiki media page...maybe I'll give that a try if I can figure out how to do it.

But for sure I'll give DriverLoader a twirl and see what happens. Thanks alot for the tips! I'll report back.

shthap3ns

I installed DriverLoader today, it installed fine up until the point it asked me for bcmlw5.sys file. I uploaded it and it immediately froze.

However, after I restarted it, wlan0 now appears in my connection settings. It even detects the available networks, including the one from my router. I typed in the WEP key and tried to switch over to the wireless connection but it just keeps saying "disconnected". Is there something I need to do to get it connected?

Sorry to hear about your troubles...
I don't know what your skill level is in linux, so I apologize if I offend you with rookie suggestions. (I don't know much beyond rookie HAHA).
Anyway, I'm concerned that it locked up on you when you loaded the sysfile. You said you would get back to me on the stacksize, so I'm assuming that's OK. Even so, could you check that the correct kernel is being used (uname -r) and that the driverloader module is actually loaded (lsmod |grep driverloader) You should see an entry of driverloader with some numbers (size and use) behind it. I'm betting that that's all probably there...
If that looks ok, try going to your management console for driverloader http://127.0.0.1:18020 Login as root as you did during the install. As a last resort, you can tinker in there and one thing I would try is using different versions of the wireless driver. I had issues when a version of driver would not load, but the failure I saw was the adapter was not even present. From the console, you can pretty easily delete and load different versions of driver.

Finally, sweep through system-config-network and double check your wireless settings. Maybe turn off WEP on your access point and see if you can even connect w/o security. Anything to prove your driver/kernel combo at least is partially sane.

iwconfig is another handy tool to check that the settings you THINK you are using are actually what is being used.


Good Luck!

Let me know how it works out.
Alan

I have not used Ubuntu, but running my ze4805us with Fedora Core, versions two through five, has presented no problems using ndiswrapper. It is important the ndiswrapper version is right for the kernel version you are using. But, in your case it is unlikely the kernel version is wrong if the driver compiled. Compilation will fail if ndiswrapper and your kernel versions are incompatible. I suggest you check what services are loading during the boot and make sure you actually need them. There may be a conflict. Also, from your terminal program (signed in as root), type dmesg, hit enter and check for useful explanatory messages usually occuring near the end. I can highly recommend Fedora since it works for me, has a huge support and development community and obtaining updates is a breeze. Good luck.

One more comment. I have used the Windows driver provided on the XP installation CD in all of my versions of ndiswrapper and Fedora Core with no problem.

svarmido

Wow! I'm surpised someone responded to this old post, and I'm just as surpised that I'm replying back. Thanks for your suggestion! I actually gave up on this awhile back, and just installed Windows XP instead...yes I know, I defected). But now that you bring this up again, I might have to go and retry this...I'll let you know what happens. Thanks!

Hey! It is O.K.. Now that you have XP installed, if you have enough space - say 30 gigabytes left on your drive why don't you go ahead with a dual boot installation? I have XP and Fedora Core 5 installed, keeping XP only because I am a sailor and nobody in the Linux community has written a good maritime charting program. There is GPSDrive, but the author is apparently unwilling to modify the program so we sailors can use free NOAA charts, available in both vector and bitmap formats... There is SeeMyDenc, but it is limited to viewing one small area at a time, has no scrolling from one chart to the next or other features present in most commercial charting programs.

If you have installed XP using the NTFS file system, change it to VFAT. That way you can define a mount point for your Windows installation when you install Linux and have full access to files stored there. I use the Windows area for backups of important files. That way, regardless of the system that may "crash", I'll have access to my files.

During installation, you will be given a choice of automatic partitioning or to use the Linux partitioning tool. Use the Linux partition tool to customize your installation, allocating say, 5 gigs to /, 10 gigs to /usr, 3 gigs to /usr/local, 5 gigs to /home, 5 gigs to /var, 3 gigs to /opt, 2 gigs to /tmp and space equal to your physical memory for "swap". Adjust depending upon your available disk space - and depending upon how much you really intend to use XP, you may want to do a new install giving more space to Linux. If there is no Windows program you must use, then why have it? You will learn that Linux has more free options available than you can possibly use. Features you want that are unavailable in one program will be available in another.

Let me know if you have any problems.

Your persistence, and the experience you gain using Linux will pay off!

Good Luck
svarmido

The best guide for installing Fedora I have found is here. http://stanton-finley.net/

Good luck.
svarmido

shthap3ns

Just when you thought you were ready to deal with ndiswrapper, the new Linux bcm43xx driver for Broadcom wireless cards appears. Fortunately, I have already determined the driver works with the card in the HP ze4805us laptop. Module bcm43xx.ko is included with the 2.6.16 and newer kernel versions for Fedora Core 5.

For installation instructions see my thread:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=441251

svarmido

I know this thread is really old but just in case someone had the same situation as me, it seems that only a very specific set of drivers seems to work for this card. The drivers are version 1.1 revision number 3.40.20.0 and can only be downloaded from driversguide.com. However because of their weird registration (almost shareware internet) practices I'm considering if enough people respond to this thread setting up my own completely free download link and posting that here. I believe these drivers are standard broadcom drivers considering the inf files to be used are labeled bcmwl5.inf and bcmwl5a.inf instead of wn-wcpi.etc...

These drivers are technically for the Motorola wn825g with broadcom chipset. and this link is also for those still using 2.4 kernels like me with my P1 laptop.