Hello My Fine Helpers,
I'm going nuts here. I finally took the leap of faith to Linux OS. First, I download Zorin OS on my Dell Inspiron XP been running it with hardwwire no wireless driver found and when I go to updates for drivers it disconnects on it's own, I have be very careful or or it will not function, now it will retrieve emails and surf the web but not update any drivers, what a pain. Oh yes, when I partician the drive before installing Zorin for some reason I can no-longer see my XP when I reboot.

Now for the Mint Mate it seems to be doing the same thing no wireless driver found. This system is a Gateway XP Pro not sure what driver are on these systems---I just forgot I'm so frustrated with both PC's. They are a bit older with less than 2gb's of Ram so that's why I choose the 32bit. Same thing with reboot I can no-longer see the XP OS. Not sure what I did wrong--probabley everything. Yes, as you can tell I'm a n ovice user a very nuch so beginner.

Thanks all,
dave

If it's a Dell, it likely has Broadcom wireless. The information in this post will help you troubleshoot this.

Hello,
This is the out come I'm getting through the terminal what does it mean? dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'sudo dpkg --configure -a' to correct the problem. I'm unable to do anything..

Just do that: run the command that it asked you to and it should correct the problem. It means that the program dpkg, which actually does the installation, got in a tangle and needs to be authorised to clean up and try again.

First of all I'm not an expert here so I have no understanding what your talking about. The reason I'm in the nebie catorgory so you need to explain to me slowly entering 'run command" because I'don't no honestly I've tried my best here I keep getting replies as if we are all pros here and understand it all, I don't for one so can somebody explain in more detain how to run this command?

Thanks.
David

If I had this issue I'd replace the Broadcom wireless card with an Intel card, like this one: http://www.intel.com/products/wireless/adapters/5000/
That way you dont have to deal with the broadcom driver mess. Intel will work out-of-the-box.

For your windows partition question, On your terminal:

run command: su -
type your root password
run command: fdisk -l

copy and paste the output here.

in your terminal, type "exit" to drop root privileges. You will know you are root when your prompt has a # at the end

example of mine:

can you connect to internet wired? If so, Mint and Zorin both hve an "additional drivers" in settings and you can get the drivers from there.

david@david-ME051:~$ su-
No command 'su-' found, did you mean:
Command 'sum' from package 'coreutils' (main)
Command 'su' from package 'login' (main)
Command 'sur' from package 'subtle' (universe)
Command 'sup' from package 'sup' (universe)
su-: command not found
david@david-ME051:~$ su
Password:
su: Authentication failure
david@david-ME051:~$ ~> su -
bash: /home/david: Is a directory
david@david-ME051:~$ su -
Password:
su: Authentication failure
david@david-ME051:~$

I can connect to the internet but there are times when I update it will disconnect on me.

Terminal Commands:
david@david-ME051:~$ lspci -vnn | grep 14e4

02:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX [14e4:170c] (rev 02)
02:03.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller [14e4:4318] (rev 02)

david@david-ME051:~$ sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer
[sudo] password for david:
E: dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'sudo dpkg --configure -a' to correct the problem.
david@david-ME051:~$ 'sudo dpkg --configure -a'
sudo dpkg --configure -a: command not found
david@david-ME051:~$

Removing old bcmwl-6.30.223.141+bdcom DKMS files...

-------- Uninstall Beginning --------
Module: bcmwl
Version: 6.30.223.141+bdcom
Kernel: 3.13.0-36-generic (i686)
-------------------------------------

Status: Before uninstall, this module version was ACTIVE on this kernel.

wl.ko:
- Uninstallation
- Deleting from: /lib/modules/3.13.0-36-generic/updates/
- Original module
- No original module was found for this module on this kernel.
- Use the dkms install command to reinstall any previous module version.

depmod.........

DKMS: uninstall completed.

------------------------------
Deleting module version: 6.30.223.141+bdcom
completely from the DKMS tree.
------------------------------
Done.
Loading new bcmwl-6.30.223.141+bdcom DKMS files...
First Installation: checking all kernels...
Building only for 3.13.0-36-generic
Building for architecture i686
Building initial module for 3.13.0-36-generic
Done.

wl:
Running module version sanity check.
- Original module
- No original module exists within this kernel
- Installation
- Installing to /lib/modules/3.13.0-36-generic/updates/

depmod.....

DKMS: install completed.
Segmentation fault

After I enter the command this is the out-put above and it disconnected my wired network service so now I have reboot to so I can resend this message and again to reconnect my wired network. Is this supposed to happen I've notice when running updates it disconnects for the network something wrong here? Or is it till I get on the wireless it will stay connected?

General note that may or not be of any help.

I think I used dpkg -i packagename.

Do you not know your root password?

I can connect to the wired network which I am now however the system disconnects on me while I try and download updates, mind boggleing forsure....I've been using the PW that I used when I configured the system...in terminal...