I think god doesn't want me to have Linux. I am limited to a wireless connection in my house and so thats the only means I have to connect to the internet. With much work I have been able to get Linux to boot but never have I been able to get my wireless working. It's been over a year now and every few months I work up the courage to try again and fail each time.

The first time I went with a Linksys PCI card. Well 3 of them to be exact. I went through 3 Linksys PCI cards all of which failed even on Windows. The cards didn't even light up. It may suggest a PCI problem with the motherboard but who knows.

Several attempts involved my SMC-2862W. Prism Frisbee chipset but every driver that even stands a chance to work causes a kernel panic. You may call me a noob or a liar and assume I don't know what I am talking about, but I swear to god, that this card caused a kernel panic through ndiswrapper with 2 different versions of the .inf file which had worked perfectly in Windows.

My most recent attempt (where I am now) is with my newely purchased Zonet ZEW2501 Wireless USB adapter which many claim to have working in Linux. I heard dozens of success stories and decided to give it a shot. Works in Windows but fails miserably in Linux. It uses the ZD1211B driver according to many different sources. I've tried it under several distrobutions and my most recent is Ubuntu since I have heard that it is the easiest. I am able to get it to "see" the card, but it won't connect. Under "iwconfig", it says "Access Point: Not-Associated" or something to that effect. No matter what I do in iwconfig it won't associate with the access point and any attempt at using the GUI utility crashes the system when I go to activate the card. I followed numerous guides and tutorials where dozens of people give cheers and thanks for getting the very same dongle to work and yet here I sit rebooting into XP to have the very same card work flawlessy under that, but not Linux. The "Access Point: Not-Associated" error also occurs with the native drivers in 2.6.18 (zd1211rw).

If anyone can give any insight as to why I am so unlucky and what I can do to fix it, I would very much appreciate it.

Ok. Why are you messing around with ndiswrapper if there is a native driver available? That's probably contributing to your problems. According to a couple sites I trust, your Zonet card works 100%

Here is the primary support page. The instructions and known problems are near the bottom. http://zd1211.ath.cx/ There may be better tutorials on the Ubuntu support sites, but those instructions look pretty straightforward to me.

Get rid of every vestige of ndiswrapper and whatever drivers you have already installed. The easiest way might be to just do a fresh install, and DO NOT install ndiswrapper. Follow the instructions for the native driver, and keep trying until it works.

That is exactly what I have been doing. ndiswrapper was an absolute last resort for when the native drivers did not work. Besides, I have not yet used ndiswrapper on my latest Ubuntu install. I have a fresh install and have been following those very same instructions. If the card hadn't worked on Windows, I think even the most knowledgable of Linux gurus would think it was a hardware issue. Fresh install of all the distros I have tried and numerous tutorials followed perfectly have failed. The card works. I can do "iwlist" and see my network, but I can't connect and get "Access Point: Not-Associated" everytime.

Update: I have successfully obtained a MAC address so that the Access Point parameter of iwconfig reads the correct address. I changed the router settings so that WEP is open instead of shared. Everything in iwconfig and ifconfig appears to be correct, but still, when I try to ping the router, I get "Destination Host Unreachable" or something like that.

In Gnome, go to Desktop|Administration|Networking and see if the card shows active there. If not, Activate it. Post your /etc/network/interfaces file.

I already configured /etc/network/interfaces. I have no choice left but to assume that the driver is buggy. Everything is correct, it just won't interface with the router even though it sees it plain as day. Unfortunately most distros (especially Ubuntu) lack a lot of the required software to compile a vanilla kernel out of the box without downloading something from there repositories. I'll have to wait until edgy (with backported patches) is released or a distro which uses 2.6.18 by default. Since the zd1211 team is focusing on the rewrite (zd1211rw), I think filing a bug report wouldn't be the best course of action right now until I can test the rewrite on several distributions with a properly compiled (not custom compiled) kernel, for that distro.

There is nothing wrong with the driver. Too many people with systems just like yours have gotten it to work. OTOH, If you're satisfied to wait until it works by itself, that's fine with me. That's why we have the Ubuntus of the world...for people who would rather wait than fix it themselves.

Does ifconfig display that you have an IP address? If not then you should run ifup or dhclient. This will get you an IP address and also configure the routing tables of the kernel so it knows where to send messages to get to the specified IP address. (This could be the cause of the 'destination host unreachable').

I've been trying to fix it myself (thus this thread). The driver might work just fine (infact I'm 100% positive it does) for most hardware it was designed for, but I just don't think it will work with this paticular deive, my ZEW2501. ifconfig and iwconfig both show all the nessisary information as does iwlist. There is a signal and it shows up. No errors in dmesg and lsmod shows the driver. The current development efforts are going to the rewrite. I'm sure it will work just fine in 2.6.18 once I get a chance to test it.

I am currently running an Airlink AWLL3026/NA (ZD1211B) under Mandriva 2007 Official, using the zd1211rw that comes with it. It set up just fine, however, my zd1211 (plain) will not make the grade. It will see the network, but not affiliate. Before this I ran it under Mandriva 2006.0 with ndiswrapper without any hitches. I think any of the usb units using the zd1211 chipset are nice units. However, I have ALWAYS had to run 'open' mode when using WEP, I have never gotten anything to work in the shared mode. Keep trying, I have had to just try different things myself to get things to network. And then all of a sudden, it works. later......jay