A friend has an HP Mini P/N FT313UA#ABA and Ubuntu 12.04 rund fine from USB. Unfortunately, the wireless will not connect although the card is activated.

Has anyone managed to solve this issue? If so, can you let me know how please?

Best wishes
WinLinUser

Post the chipset of the wireless controller. That's the basic info you need to troubleshoot this problem. If your not sure how to do that, just post the output of:

$ lspci

That will list everything on the pci bus. The wireless controller probably has one of the Broadcom chipsets which have caused a lot of problems in the past. The most recent LTS release, Ubuntu 14.04, cleaned up some of those Broadcom issues. You could try installing 14.04 and see if you have better luck.

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Hi kilgoretrout

Many thanks for the fast reply. I do not have the machine and will not do so until Tuesday. However, I have researched Hp website and the wireless card appears to be Broadcom BCM4312.

The USB stick has Ubuntu loaded and works just fine on my Asus R101 netbook.

I will check further on Tuesday with the actual machine. Sorry for the delay.

winlinuser

That particular chipset is known to be a problem in 12.04. Just google "ubuntu 12.04 wireless broadcom bcm 4312" if you don't believe me. Here is one of many solutions I found by googling the above:

http://askubuntu.com/questions/32520...lation-bcm4312

and:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wi...Driver/bcm43xx

You want to use the proprietary wl-sta driver. The second link gives instructions for doing that on ubuntu 12.04 which mainly consists in installing the bcmwl-kernel-source package. I believe these issues were cleaned up in 14.04.

Hi kilgoretrout

Many many thanks for your trouble. Having read the links I think I may just move on to 14.04 - it would make more sense at this point and I can always go back to 12.04 if necessary.

Your expertise is greatly appeciated sir.

Best wishes
Alan

Your more than welcome. Glad I could help. But note the info in this link re 14.04 and BCM4312:

http://askubuntu.com/questions/48105...dell-xps-m1330

Apparently, after installing you have to do the updates($ sudo apt-get update) before the BCM4312 drivers appear in the "additional drivers" window. That would imply that you need to have wired internet access to do that update and thus have access to the appropriate wireless drivers. Don't know if that applies to the updated ubuntu download of 14.04.1. That version may include the fix needed for BCM4312 without the need for apt-get update.

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Hi kilgoretrout

Well, I downloaded 14.04 and installed to my USB stick. It worked beautifully on my Asus notebook and on my Emachines laptop which has the BCM4312 the same as the HP Notebook I am trying to make work. I thought I was home and dry.

Wrong! It loaded into the HP Mini easily but failed to recognise the wireless card at all. I tried a hard link by cable to the LAN only to find that it recognised the LAN card but failed to connect to the web. This may be the fault of the Win XP based network, and system restrictions, at Age UK. I tried the Mini under Windows and the LAn did not access but the WiFi did.

Nest move was to try to use the Broadcom drivers in Ubuntu - and, as you suggested, they don't exist. Pure frustration!!!!

Nest Tuesday I will ask my client to loan me the Mini and I will try at home on my network to complete this "simple" task.
If she is prepared to let me do this I will be using your links above to complete - assuming there are no actual hardware issues.

Yet again, very many thanks for your help. Whilst I have been using Ubuntu and Mint for some time now, I don't claim to be expert so you advice is very welcome. :-D

Best wishes
Alan

PS. I'm so impressed with 14.04 I am planning an upgrade for my old HP laptop (currently 12.04).

Update! I did update the HPlaptop - it turns out to have the Broadcom BCM4312 wireless card the same as the HP Mini I am having problems with. The same problem occurred. However, I was directed to HTTP://wireless.kernal.org/en/users/Drivers/B43. I used the command
sudo apt-get install firmware-43-installer

BINGO!!! Instant success :-D I will use this on the Mini next Tuesday and let you know the outcome. Looking good :-D

Alan

Well, Things did not work out with the HP Mini. The command went smoothly enough but the wireless did not activate??? After playing with a Cat5 cable I got the Mini accessing via the wire which it had refused to do previously, and then found that wireless card was not even recognised. Frustration!!!!

We ran out of time and it will be two weeks before my friend can get in again. This is turning into a marathon. Sorry to bore everyone, I think it is time to close this thread as I am making little progress.

Many thanks for all the help I have received - you guys are great.

I can tell you that networking (both wired and wireless) on my Dell Mini (which also uses the Broadcom BCM4312 wireless controller) works fine with with Linux Mint 16 (based on Ubuntu 13.10). However, I did all of my initial setup using the wired interface

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Check rfkill list.

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rokytnji - I had never heard of rfkill but have found it invaluable. Class reference!

My friend did not turn up again this week (don't know why) so still no further forward. Regardless, the help you guys have provided has been invaluable. Many thanks :-D