Hi all, I am trying to get a wireless connection on my Dell inspiron 630m laptop using Suse 10.1. Suse has detected the card at installation time and has installed a driver for it. It's an 'Intel Pro/Wireless 2200BG' wireless card. This card is also listed in the PCI monitor that comes with Suse. However it does not seem to be turned on when i boot into linux as iwconfig only list's my ethernet card not the wireless card. If i go into yaste > networks I can view the card in there and the name it has been given.

So the next thing I tried was ndiswrapper. I got the windows driver and installed it fine using ndiswrapper. But when i type ndiswrapper -l in says the driver is installed but not that the hardware is present.

Also Knetwork manager does not detect a wireless card or connection.

So I can't really begin to get a connection if my card doesn't even appear to be turned on, does anybody know what I can try?

I've had a similar problem with the same mini-pci card in my toshiba satellite 2435. It turned out that there was some problem with my motherboard and the wireless card would never turn on, no matter how many times/ways I sent the power on signal.

The solution was to open my laptop back up, take out the card I just put in, and tape over pins 11 and 13 (odd pins are on the top, even ones on the bottom). After that I told the card to power on and I've been happily living wireless ever since.

Don't know if that is your problem, but I hope it helps.

P.S.
Pin 11 and 13 are what controls the power on/off fucntion of the card, so taping over then stops the card from turning the radio off.

Have you installed the firmware for the ipw2200? I have a laptop with the ipw2100 integral wireless built in, and have to install the proprietary firmware in the proper directory for udev to find it at boot.

Get the firmware here: http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/firmware.php

Thanks for the reply. I have done nothing with firmware so this is probably where I am going wrong. I downloaded the files you directed me to and put them in the folder /lib/firmware/ The card is still not loading at boot but I have noticed an error at boot to do with ipw2200 not loading.

This error comes and goes to quickly for me to get any information from it so does linux store a log file anywhere with all the text at boot time in it? Maybe I can see whats going on if i can read the output it's giving me at boot.

Thanks again

You may have to uninstall ndiswrapper for it to work. I'm unfamiliar with SuSE, but the /lib/firmware is the correct folder - it's same folder that I use in my Debian install. With a fresh install, with nothing more than a 2.6.14 or newer kernel and the firmware in the correct folder, it should come right up at boot.

The 2.6.14 kernels (and newer) have the ipw support built right into the kernels - I waited a long time to see that - the modules should come with the kernel. Unless you compile and install your own kernel, that is.

What kernel do you have?

As root, "dmesg" at the command line might give you an idea of what's going on.

Ok i read the output from dmesg and the error was only confirming that the card was being detected but the firmware was not loading. So i looked more closely at the link you gave me and followed the documentation on that site. I re-installed the ieee80211 modules, ipw2200 modules and firmware files. After reboot the card was up and running, after a few settings in knetwork manager I have a good wireless internet connection.

Thanks for all your help.
- Tom