Hello Everyone....this is my first post so please bare with me. I am a total computer newbie. I am trying to connect to the internet. I have my internet connection button on my laptop on. But it want let me connect. The Linux software is new to me. Help!!!!!!!!

P.S. I have looked on the forum but everything doesn't seem to be in complete English for me to understand.

Welcome to LQ!

However, we need a lot more specific information from you. What make/model of laptop are you using?

What linux distribution do you have installed (linux distributions are collections of programs all running on top of the linux kernel, some examples are Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, Fedora, CentOS and each one has versions like Ubuntu 11.4, Debian 6.0 Squeeze, etc.)?

How are you trying to connect? Wirelessly to a local wireless router? To a 3G/4G network? To wired network?

I have an HP laptop and I am using Ubuntu. Thanks for the quick response.

Purplej7

as pljvaldez asked before - what type of connection are you trying to connect to ? Is it wired or wireless ? Which release are you using? Ubuntu 11.04? If you are unable to connect to wireless, first try connecting to a wired network and see if ubuntu wants to install some updates.

The more important question is this: wired or wireless networking?

If wireless, the most likely issue is something to do with the driver for the wireless chipset.

Try connecting to your router with an ethernet cable and booting the computer, then test the connection.

Open a terminal and run the command lspci, then post the output here; that will provide information about your networking hardware.

Again, what model of HP laptop? What version of Ubuntu?

What is the output of lspci at the command line (place in <code> brackets in your response)?

EDIT: Oops, forgot to submit this and someone beat me to it...

Sorry for the late response from yesterdays post had an emergency to take care of. Any who I have an HP laptop pavilion AMD running on Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat. I have charter communications cable that has a desktop on the direct ethernet cable and the laptop is wireless. I was using the laptop pulling off my wireless network with no problem then one day I turned my laptop on and it couldn't connect to the internet. No server to be found. I haven't done anything differently than before. I hope this info helps. Remember Im a computer dummy!

Can you post the output of lspci so we know what networking hardware you have?

It sounds like it was working fine on Ubuntu until one day it didn't. Who originally set up the laptop on the wireless connection? What make/model# is your wireless router?

The wireless router is a Netgear by Charter Communications.

The lspci output:

00:0a.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation MCP51 SMBus (rev a3)
00:0a.3 Co-processor: nVidia Corporation MCP51 PMU (rev a3)
00:0b.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP51 USB Controller (rev a3)
00:0b.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP51 USB Controller (rev a3)
00:0d.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP51 IDE (rev f1)
00:0e.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP51 Serial ATA Controller (rev f1)
00:10.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP51 PCI Bridge (rev a2)
00:10.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP51 High Definition Audio (rev a2)
00:14.0 Bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP51 Ethernet Controller (rev a3)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTra
nsport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address
Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Con
troller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscella
neous Control
07:05.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R 5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller
07:05.1 SD Host controller: Richol Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapte
r (rev 19)
07:05.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (re
v 0a)
07:05.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card controller (rev 05)

Hmmm. I don't see the wireless device. How about lshw?

May it be that there is a physical switch to turn of the wireless on that laptop. Since we can't see the wireless device i the output of lspci I would assume that it is switched off.

Ok. I got a messeage after I typed in lshw: WARNING: you should run this program as super-user. Then it said description: Computer width: 32 bits
*-core
description: Motherboard
physical id: 0
*-memory:0
description: System memory
physical id: 1
size: 1015MiB
*-cpu
product:AMD Turion (tm) 64 x2 Mobile Technology TL-50
vendor: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD]
physical id: 4
bus info: cpu@0
verision: 15.8.2
size: 1600MHz
capacity: 1600MHz
width: 64 bits
capabilities: fpu fpu exception wp vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic
mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse 2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr
opt rdtscp x86-64 3dnowext 3dnow extd_apicid pni cx16 ;ajf_;, c,[_;egacu sv, ex
tapic cr8_legacy cpufreq
*-cache:0
description: L1 cache
physical id: 0
size: 128KiB
*-cache:1
description: L2 cache
physical id: 1
sizeZ:256Kib
*-memory:1 UNCLAIMED
description: RAM memory
product: C51 Host Bridge
vendor: nVidia Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:00:00.0
version: a2
width: 32 bits
clock: 66MHz (15.2ns)
capabilities: bus_master cap_list
configuration: latency=0
*-memory:2 UNCLAIMED
description: RAM memory
product: C51 Memory Controller 0
vendor: nVidia Corporation
physical id: 0.1
bus info: pci@0000:00:00.1
version: a2
width: 32 bits
clock: 66MHz (15.2ns)
configuration: latency=0
*-memory:3 UNCLAIMED
description: RAM memory

No the physical switch is not turned off

Try sudo lshw and enter your user password. You're specifically looking for something networking related, my guess would be a broadcom chipset. But if some sort of wireless card doesn't show up, it would seem you have some sort of hardware issue. Maybe the wireless card was disabled in the BIOS or something..?