All,
After many forums and searches, big smile, finally ndiswrapper -l states bcmwl5 (or bcmwl5a) hardware present. Saddly modprobe ndiswrapper fails to load. The response I receive is:
"Could not open '/lib/modules/uname -r/extra/ndiswrapper.ko: No such file or directory."
I deleted this file a couple of days ago as numerous LQ and wiki threads spoke of its evil nature.
I am running Suse 9.1 pro, Ndiswrapper 0.10-1.6, wlan drivers bcmwl5 and bcmwl5a .inf & .sys are from my installed xp home drivers file, copied over to Suse. Broadcom BCM94306 wlan integrated on an Emachines M2350. Kernel 2.6.5-7.151 and source loaded.
Some threads mentioned conflicts with eth0 so I ifdowned them and ifuped wlan0 producing no joy, iwconfig shows no wireless extensions and dmesg has no references to ndiswrapper at all.
These comands were all used I hope in the correct sequence

modprobe -r ndiswrapper

ndiswrapper -i /inf&sys/file/located/here

ndiswrapper -l
Installed ndis drivers:
bcmwl5 hardware present
modprobe ndiswrapper
Failure as noted above!

I am totally stumped as to how to modprobe this installation.
Thanks in advance
Regards
Bob

Threads said that that file shouldn't be there?!
Ndiswrapper is made up of two parts, a "userspace" part, and a kernel part. That file is required by the kernel part for ndiswrapper in 2.6* kernels. The only case where you wouldn't want that file would be if you had a 2.4* kernel, which uses *.so module extensions instead (ie: ndiswrapper.so).

UH OH!
Guess I'll reinstall the ndiswrapper and hope for the best. Thank-you for the info on the kernel differences. The posts must have been old and I though it was relevant.
Regards
Bob

Reloaded kernel, source, ndiswrapper. All else is well except modprobe now reports the following at dmesg.

ndiswrapper (wrapper_init:2286): loadndiswrapper failed (1536);check utils version mismatch

I've been at this since tuesday and frustration is setting in.

I don't run suse, so I may be off base here, but it looks like you may need to reinstall the "module-init-tools", which I'm guessing may be a package on the suse system?

Here is a quick dumping of things I found relating to your problem. The links are to google cache entries so you can better find what I searched for. You may find them useful. The first one talks about the "module-init-tools" (quite a ways down the thread).

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache...match%22&hl=en
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache...mismatch&hl=en

Good luck.

What this is trying to say here is the the .ko file is not your current Kernal Directory. So you may have run suse update and a new kernal patch came down. No biggy if You are using the version of NDISwrapper that comes with suse 9.1 Go into yast and search for ndiswrapper and uncheck it (You Might beable to reload). Hit ok and let suse go threw it thing. Then go back into yast and reinstall it. This should work.

If not Check out the NDISwrapper Wiki on how to do a manual uninstall.

If you are running a version LATER then NDISwrapper 1.0 you can go into the directory (example /root/ndiswrapper1.1) and type make uninstall

Thank-you all. Have reloaded the 9.1 and used the provided version, 0.6 of ndiswrapper that came with Suse. The responses from this site have helped me understand the "wrapping" and function of the software. It was the kernal that had to be reloaded not ndiswrapper!!! (Read the thread Bob) The broadcom is now operating correctly. In the last seven days have loaded multiple instances of linux on my desktop machine. Found Ubuntu to be fairly user friendly and may stick with that on this machine but will use Suse on the laptop because of the great multi boot loader. Still have not got the sound working on the laptop.........but that's another story for another day. Again I would like to thank-you all for the help.
Regards
Bob

Sound should work. Ali5451 and to get the speakers working turn off the external amp in the mixer. I still trying to get it wireless to work with debian but I may need to recopile the Kernel. I just can't get iwconfig to accept anything, the module loads fine. All the configuration tools can't configure it.

Stephen