Hello,

I've got an HP nc6000 laptop and have just installed Mandriva 2006 on it. Everything works fine except for the wireless connection. I can see the hardware ok and have configured the wireless connection. Everything looks ok but I still can't get it to connect. Iwconfig shows the following:

[root@Chazztop ~]# iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

eth1 radio off ESSIDff/any
Mode:Managed Channel:0 Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00
Bit Rate=0 kb/s Tx-Power=off
Retry limit:7 RTS thrff Fragment thrff
Encryption keyff
Power Managementff
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:0 Missed beacon:0

sit0 no wireless extensions.

When booting up, the eth1 interface loads successfully but it's as if the hardware is turned off and I can't see any way of activating it. The card itself is an Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200BG and I'm using the ‎ipw2200 driver.

Any ideas?

If your driver is loaded, and it sees the hardware, then you've got the hardware working.

Have you configured the eth1 connection with ipconfig/iwconfig? Before it is to connect successfully, use iwconfig to set up the ssid & wep/wpa keys, that should bring up one part of the interface. The 2nd part of the interface is configured using ipconfig, you can set it to draw an ip address or you can set a static (preferred if you know your network) ip address, subnet, gateway. Finally, to get out on the internet you'll need to configure /etc/resolv.conf and put your dns addresses in there.

Once all parts of 2nd step is done, it should connect to the internet, but it won't be automatic till you configure /etc/network/interfaces accordingly and from there it will bring up your connection upon boot.

Additional tip: use "iwlist eth1 scanning" to find available wireless networks to connect to.

I have the same laptop and hardware as you so I've done this plenty of times but with debian. I'm not familiar enough with rpm based distros to tell you where the files are really located, but those files should be equivalent to the ones on Mandriva.