I have two (2) desktop computers, each using the Belkin F5D8000 wireless card in a PCI cardbus adapter. Both computers have AMD64 processors, but are dual booted with SUSE 10.1 (X86_32).
I have used identical procedures to load ndiswrapper and Netgear's driver. One computer works flawlessly, the other does not work at all. Here is the procedure I used:
As root download and extract ndiswrapper-1.17 and WPNT511_v1104 Windows driver.
As root, cd ndiswrapper-1.17
As root make distclean
As root make
As root make install
As root cd WPNT511_v1104/Utility/Driver
As root ndiswrapper -i netani.inf
As root ndiswrapper -l (shows netani driver present, hardware present)
As root ndiswrapper -d 17cb:0001 netani
As root ndiswrapper -m
As root depmod -a
As root modprobe ndiswrapper
As root ifconfig shows NO wlan0 and no wireless extensions
As root ifconfig shows no wlan0
As root dmesg produces the following (partial shown):

ndiswrapper: module not supported bu Novell, setting U taint flag.
ndiswrapper version 1.17 loaded (preempt=no, smp=yes)
ndiswrapper:driver netani (Airgo Networks, Inc., 06/30/05, 1.5.0.147) loaded
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:03:00.0[A] -> Link [AP4] -> GSI 19 (level,low) -> IRQ 177
ndiswrapper (NdisWrieErrorLogEntry: 246): code 1768186984
ndiswrapper (NdisWrieErrorLogEntry: 246): code 1953066601
ndiswrapper (NdisWrieErrorLogEntry: 246): code 994
ndiswrapper (miniport_init: 262): couldn't initialize device: C000009A
ndiswrapper (pnp_start_device: 438): Windows driver couldn't initialize the device (C0000001)
ndiswrapper (miniport_halt: 303): device f6dd7380 is not initialized - not halting
ndiswrapper: device eth%d removed
unregister_netdevice: device eth%d/f6dd7000 never was registered
ndiswrapper: probe of 0000:03:00.0 failed with error -22

I have tried several times (from scratch, reinstalled kernel sources, tried ndiswrapper 1.10 and 1.16 but the result of modprobe ndiswrapper is the same: the ndiswrapper driver module is not being inserted into the kernel.

What do I do now? PLEASE !!!
TIA

Welcome to LQ!

I'd suggest swapping the cards between the two machines and see if the failure is card related or machine related. My gut is that you've either got a bad card or that one of the cards is a different version and therefore needs a different driver.

I have swapped the cards; the problem remains with the computer. The ONLY difference I can find is that the "bad" computer is using the nVidia nForce3 chipset (the "good" one is using a VIA chipset.
In examining dmesg printout on the "bad" machine, I also found these messages:
PCI: Failed to allocate mem resource #1 80000@fb080000 for 000:03:00.0
PCI: Failed to allocate mem resource #0 20000@fb020000 for 000:03:00.0

03:00.0 is the wireless card.

Now what?

And thanks for replying.

Dang. That is one doozy of a first problem to post. I think you are right in that the nVidia nForce3 chipset is a likely culprit. From the googling I did, it seems to be an IRQ conflict with PCI and Cardbus. The problem is I'm not finding any suggestions on how to fix it. I would try a couple of things however.

First, I would check the Belkin website for other drivers. Since you're running 64 bits, I'm guessing the selection is going to be limited.

The other thing I would do would be to get in touch with the ndiswrapper developers and see if they are aware of this problem and any potential solutions. Like I said, googling shows that you are not alone, but solutions are kind of elusive.

Did you guys figure this out?
Are you sure your 'working' pc did not have any other means of connectivity that might have mislead you into believing you were actually connecting through the belkin card?


As far as my setup goes, I reached the point where the card is recognized and I am able to scan for networks. However I cant connect any essid. Even though it shows that I am connected, no connectivity is achieved. I tried running tcpdump, and I see a bunch of weird messages like 'IP packet truncated'...

You might want to have a look through this thread. I've seen it referenced in a couple of places as being helpful.

Just to answer my own question,


- I did resolve the problem. The trick was not to install the stock ndiswrapper from the ports (be it Gentoo, SuSe, Ubuntu), but to get the latest version of the sources for the ndiswrapper together with kernel headers for your current version. The system I got it working with is a suse 10.1, kernel patch level 2.6.13, with ndiswrapper utils 1.8, driver version 1.21. The installation procedure is the same as outlined in ndiswrapper wiki.

Drop me a line if you still have troubles.


-ig