hello i am a noob to linux and have been trying to to setup my Broadcom wireless for a couple of weeks now. after scouring the net & trying many options with no luck i figured i should try just asking for help. i have an HP Pavillion dv2736 laptop with a Broadcom 4310 chipset. I am trying to run Linux Mint 5 XFCE version. I went to my menue in Mint to System>Windows Wireless to to install my driver. i am trying to use bcmwl6.inf for this install. the windows wireless window shows that the hardware is present & i made sure wireless was enabled under the hardware drivers screen. the bcmwl6 folder is present in /ect/ndiswrapper but when I use ndiswapper -l no drivers are listed. I read that Broadcom must have firmware to work and the only solution i can find is to use fwcutter. but from what i understand fwcutter & ndiswrapper don't play nice i would like to stick with ndiswrapper because i read it is more stable than fwcutter. as i said i am new to this so please assume i am doing everything wrong. thanks.

Which kernel version does your Linux Mint distribution use? I ask because newer kernels (2.23 and up) usually include the b43 or bcm43xx drivers which are automatically started if a Broadcom card is detected during the boot (unless those, and similar, drivers have been added to the modprobe blacklist).

Do a ps -e | grep 43 from a command line to see if any process with a b and a 43 is running. If so, you need to either remove ndiswrapper and do the fwcutter thing to extract the microcode for the b43 will actually work, or add the b43 stuff to the blacklist file.

The information you found that the b43 driver didn't work as well as the ndiswrapper is, I believe, now outdated, so my recommendation is that you go with the driver supplied with your distribution.

In any case, there's no hope of getting your wireless too work if you've got two different drivers attachedto the same hardware.

Note that, as I said, this is speculation about the cause of your problem, but it's been a fairly common problem since the FOSS Broadcom drivers were added to the kernel.

This is really a wireless networking question. Sounds like you've got the wrong windows driver or don't have it installed.

If the card is a:
Broadcom Corporation BCM4310 USB Controller (rev 01)

Like mine on my hpdv6835, the b43/bcm43xx drivers won't work.
1)They don't support (internal) USB
2)the 4310 is listed as unsupported

ndiswrapper is really the only option – that or better yet, get a belkin, d-link or netgear expressbus card. That should work with madwifi, or better yet, the the new ath9k drivers

Run “ndiswrapper -r” to remove anything that might be there. Delete everything in the /etc/ndiswrapper dir. Delete /etc/modprode.d/ndiswrapper if it exists. Edit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist. Make sure there is no reference to ndiswrapper in the file. Add the following lines:

# Don't load these wireless net card driver modules. Using ndiswrapper
blacklist b43
blacklist bcm43xx

Get the Win XP (not the Vista) wireless drivers for your notebook from HP, run the exe to extract and copy the .inf and .sys files to a temp dir where ndiswrapper can read them.

Run the ndiswrapper installation on the downloaded inf file (bcmwl5.inf is mine) and restart.

ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf
ndiswrapper -m
ndiswrapper -ma
ndiswrapper -mi

(see ndiswrapper –help)

If your network card doesn't show up now, you may need to build the latest version of ndiswrapper against your kernel.