wireless problems on new install
 

Ive been al over the net and the solutions seem too technical for me to understand. Im an old guy sick of windows and was installing Ubuntu 15.10 on a dell Inspiron 1545 64 bit that is running vista. I can not find any wireless internet connections after the install. I checked and my wireless is working. I don't have access to Ethernet. Sorry to say I don't know much about computers but really want to get into Linux. Any help would be great.

There are a couple of commands which can assist in diagnosing whether or not the system sees your wireless adapter.Post the output of those commands.

Further, can you determine the wireless adapter which your computer does have? Like when you boot it in Windows, can you go to the Device Manager and get the properties on your wireless adapter and post what model it is?

I will give a try later- thanks- btw if I can connect to an Ethernet cable will I just be able to download an additional driver?

Yes

Hi...

Welcome to the forum :)

In addition, would you also post the entire results of these commands...

These will help to determine what adapter you have and what is going on. :)

Regards...

possible solution
 

im going to try to round up an Ethernet cable and download a driver- will let you all know how it goes-trying to borrow from a friend-

to rtmistler
 

dell wireless 1397 wlan mini card rev 5.00
chip set BCM4315/BCM22062000

is this the info you asked for?

That was what he wanted.

For more info.
lspci -vvnn | grep -A 9 Network

Till he doesn't get back, see this. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wi...Driver/bcm43xx

Try this: System Settings-->Hardware-->Driver Manager. That may find the software you need, once you are connected via a wired connection.

I can't test it because I don't need any proprietary drivers on my Mint box.

Not exactly, please open a terminal and run the commands I listed above and post the entire contents. Copy and pasting will make this pretty fast work, in case you weren't aware. ;)

Regards...

There's a lot of info on that card and it's all problematic. And I know that when I offer a thought saying "too much trouble" that some will chime back in saying "absolutely wrong, you can make it work." So these are my $0.02 thoughts and also I feel that people will say that things can be made to work, because we're technical people and we like a challenge, so we refuse to let something like a complicated problem beat us.

The reasons for me are that I see kernel declarations of 2.6.17, 2.6.24, 2.6.38, and so forth. To me ALL of those kernel versions were "in transition" with respect to a lot of certain 802.11 drivers. And I feel during that time frame there were two best options, (1) choose another WIFI device, (2) try different distributions.

It's not that you can't get it to work, but you jump through a lot of hoops. So you get it to work, all is great. Then you change your system via upgrade or you need to reconstruct it. Then you are back at that same point where you need to follow the extensive procedure to get it working again.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wi...Driver/bcm43xx
http://askubuntu.com/questions/61414...broadcom-b4311

wireless solution
 

oh happy days- after getting hold of an ethernet wire and installing Ubuntu all the local wireless connections popped up- thank you all for all your help, but im on and a happy new Linux user- thanks again

Glad you got it working. :)

If you would, please mark this thread as "SOLVED" by clicking on "Thread Tools" directly above your initial post. Thanks!

Regards...

marked solved