Trying to load module "ndiswrapper" with modprobe; modprobe ndiswrapper doesn't work!
 

I've had Linux for about a week, and I'm still trying to get ndiswrapper to work! I have a Microsoft MN-720 card. When I do ndiswrapper -l it says I have the driver and hardware there. But, when I do modprobe ndiswrapper, it says "FATAL: Module ndiswrapper not found." I've tried everything I can think of! Can anyone help me?

[bendreyzen@localhost utils]$ ./ndiswrapper -l
Installed ndis drivers:
mn720-ankh driver present, hardware present
[bendreyzen@localhost utils]$ /sbin/modprobe nidswrapper
FATAL: Module nidswrapper not found.
[bendreyzen@localhost utils]$

From Ben

what version distro you running ? what wersion ndis you got? what version kernel you got?

it difficult to say what is happenning without enough info??

I have Fedora 2.85 I think and I have ndiswrapper v-1.1. My kernel version is 2.6.11-1.14_FC3.

From Ben

I had this error with Debian. Somehow the ndiswrapper module didn't get installed correctly. In Debian, I had to use module-assistant to get it working correctly. I'm not sure what you would use in Fedora.

Edit: I did a little research on Fedora's web site and found that they have "modutils" available as a package, so I added what's below.

Try typing in "modinfo ndiswrapper" and see what you get.

If you get "modinfo: could not find module ndiswrapper", then try, "modinfo usbcore". ndiswrapper depends on usbcore. No usbcore, try "modprobe usbcore" then "modprobe ndiswrapper"

if you do have usbcore and you don't have ndiswrapper, try "update-modules". You may have to reboot after that one, then try "modprobe ndiswrapper"

BTW: When you try to modprobe anything in, you should use: modprobe -n -v --first-time [module-name] to have a dry run to make sure everything will be OK. (NOW we tell you, right?)

If all else fails, try the old school way: "insmod lib/modules/`uname -r`/misc/ndiswrapper.ko". If you get file not found, then ndiswrapper.ko was put in an unusual place. Do a search for it and change the above path to fit.

Note: the ` marks around uname -r are NOT apostrophe's. They are the tick marks located to the left of the number "1" on a US keyboard.

RK

Ok, either I'm really clueless or there are some serious problems with ndiswrapper on my computer... Probably both. I tried all of the things you suggested, and nothing did much. It couldn't find usbcore, and it didn't even recognize the command "insmod." It's probably just not in my path, right? Which directory is it in? Also, I did a search for "ndiswrapper" and ".ko" and neither one found ndiswrapper.ko. Geez I'm bad at this stuff...

Try "modprobe -n -v --first-time usbcore". If you don't get any errors, remove the -n switch and do it for real.

RK

Still got "FATAL: Could not find module usbcore."

With ndiswrapper-1.1, I did make rpm, then installed the rpm on FC3, but ndiswrapper.ko did not get installed. I had to:

mkdir /lib/modules/[kernel-version-here]/misc
cd ..../ndiswrapper-1.1
cp driver/ndiswrapper.ko /lib/modules/[kernel-version-here]/misc/
depmod -a
modprobe ndiswrapper

then I saw the devide with iwconfig.

Good luck

--Fred

depmod sort of worked
 

I was having the same issue as above:

FATAL:Module ndiswrapper not found

Then I moved ndiswrapper.ko to the correct location and ran
depmod -a
modprobe ndiswrapper

Now I get this error:
FATAL:Error inserting ndiswrapper (/lib/modules/2.6.11.10/misc/ndiswrapper.ko): Invalid module format

Does anyone have any suggestions? My specs are below:
Toshiba Portege 7140CT
P-III 500 MHz, 192 MB RAM, 6 GB HD
MiniSlack 1.1 (Kernel 2.6.11.10)
ndiswrapper 1.1
Belkin Wireless PCMCIA card FD7010 54G BroadCom Chipset


Thank you in advance....

J

Erm, im not sure if anyone else noticed, but it looks like he spelt ndiswrapper wrong at the top, not sure if its just he typed it wrong on the forums but hey - it's worth saying...

1. Upgrade your kernel to 2.6.12-1.1381_FC3.
2. install ipw2200-firmware.
3. install kernel-module-ndiswrapper-2.6.12-1.1381_FC3
(Better way is to use yum and install as takes care of the dependencies),
4.install cabextract
5. download the driver SP30290.exe from the winxp site.
6. Unpack the SP30290.exe to some directory. To do so run
$ cabextract SP30290.exe
7. /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5a.inf
8. $ /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper -m
It will add an alias to /etc/modprobe.conf

Now you can reboot to have it activated,
or you can run
$ depmod -a
$ modprobe ndiswrapper

Configure using iwconfig.

more weirdness with ndiswrapper
 

Greetings,

After upgrading to Fedora Core 5, ndiswrapper worked perfectly everytime (on an Acer Aspire 5004WLMi). I found the driver for the Broadcom wireless card, followed the ndiswrapper instructions and everything was great.

The other night, I had some work to do but was getting sleepy so I enabled the wireless card and took the laptop into bed. I then did a "yum update". Ever since, when I try to run modprobe I get the ol' "FATAL: Module ndiswrapper not found.".

The softlink to /lib/modules is there, everything looks as it should but still I get the error. Even "ndiswrapper -l" returns:

bcmwl5 driver installed, hardware present

yet the problem persists.

Any help/advice/suggestions are *greatly* appreciated.

:confused:

P.S. I am now on 2.6.16-1.2111

I'm in the same boat as Choad here. I couldn't get it working on FC4 so I got FC5 and it worked but because of the 4k stack it crashed so I rebooted and upgraded the kernel to 16k stack and now it wont find the ndiswrapper module. I've ran the usual several times and have tried moving the ndiswrapper.ko to the directory suggested in a post above this and get :

"FATAL: Error inserting ndiswrapper (/lib/modules/2.6.16-1.2111_FC5.stk16/misc/ndiswrapper.ko): Invalid module format"

Any ideas from here? I've tried installing kernel-module-ndiswrapper but this does sweet f*** all.

Kernel: 2.6.16-1.2111_FC5.stk16
Distro: Fedora Core 5
Ndiswrapper: 1.16

Thanx in advance.

Perhaps FC5 comes with a GCC version that is not supported by ndiswrapper?

I proudly installed the latest GCC 4.1.1 on my Gentoo machine and got the 'module not recognized' error. After lots of fumbling I got it to work with GCC 3.4.5. Easy mistake to make I guess. To select the correct compiler in Gentoo, do:

This problem was sorted mate. When I upgraded the kernel to a 16k stack size it sent Ndiswrapper loopy. If I kept the 4k stack size kernel it worked. Luckily the 4k stack didn't crash the kernel.

Thanx for the reply though, Ste.

similar problem on suse?
 

Hi

I have a similar problem on Suse 9.3.The card I have, is a Gigabyte GN-WP01GS, which presumably uses the RaLink RT/61 driver. I could not get this to work, so instead I tried the ndiswrapper way.

I got the driver from Gigabyte's site, and installed it with ndiswrapper:

I installed ndiswrapper from YaST, and when I try and locate the ndiswrapper.ko file, it doesn't seem to exist.

It's kind of imperrative that I get this to work without having to recompile the kernel, or download any other software. I need to be able to get it to work with only the Suse DVD and the driver's CD that came with the card.

Can someone please help me with this?

Hi!
ndiswrapper does not work for me either!
I get completed hung on modprobe ndiswrapper.
I`m using FC5 with kernel-2.6.17-1.2157_FC5 and ndiswrapper-1.18-1.lvn5.
[root@lnx2 ~]# modinfo ndiswrapper
filename: /lib/modules/2.6.17-1.2157_FC5/extra/ndiswrapper/ndiswrapper.ko
author: ndiswrapper team <ndiswrapper-general@lists.sourceforge.net>
description: NDIS wrapper driver
version: 1.18
license: GPL
vermagic: 2.6.17-1.2157_FC5 mod_unload 686 REGPARM 4KSTACKS gcc-4.1
depends:
srcversion: 3FDEA0E072B0486E28CFF1E
parm: hangcheck_interval:The interval, in seconds, for checking if driver is hung. (default: 0) (int)
parm: debug:debug level (int)
parm: proc_gid:The gid of the files created in /proc (default: 0). (int)
parm: proc_uid:The uid of the files created in /proc (default: 0). (int)
parm: if_name:Network interface name or template (default: wlan%d) (charp)
[root@lnx2 ~]# ndiswrapper -l
Installed drivers:
mrv8000c driver installed, hardware present
I`m using a encore ENLWI-G card.
I tried all the tips I saw, and I still in the same!
If anybody had success with this, please tell me
Tks,,,,,,,,,,,,,,fabio

Hi

I have exactly same problem with you guys, while I am using FC 5, with 2.6.15 kernel.

[root@sluo driver]# insmod ndiswrapper.ko
insmod: error inserting 'ndiswrapper.ko': -1 Invalid module format

I have the same problem ,,,,
I have ZenWalk 2.4 with kernel 2.6.18
-- how can solve this problem

Thanks. Same problem. Solve it just coping file "ndiswrapper.ko" to /lib/modules/`uname -r`/misc/

after

# depmod -a
# modprobe ndiswrapper
# iwconfig

PC: Using laptop HP Pavilion dv6000 (dv6300)
OS: Debian 4.0 etch
uname -a:
Linux debian 2.6.18-4-k7 #1 SMP Mon Mar 26 17:57:15 UTC 2007 i686 GNU/Linux

lspci | grep Network:
03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation Dell Wireless 1390 WLAN Mini-PCI Card (rev 01)

ndiswrapper -l:
installed drivers:
bcmwl5 driver installed, hardware (14E4:4324) present (alternate driver: bcm43xx)

Some of the problems reported in this thread are caused by not having an ndiswrapper module matched to the kernel version being run. If you have a working ndiswrapper, and you change kernel versions, ndiswrapper will stop working until you get a new version of ndiswrapper. You can't simply move the ndiswrapper.ko file from one place to another in /lib/modules/. It has to be recompiled.

If you have the source code for ndiswrapper and you have the header files for the kernel you're running, you can compile and install a new module ndiswrapper.ko yourself. Otherwise, you'll have to find a pre-compiled ndiswrapper somewhere that matches your kernel.

I wouldn't worry too much about those warnings about a 4k stack you get when you compile ndiswrapper. I've gotten the warnings on two systems, but never had a problem. I'm not sure the ndisrapper code correctly detects 4k stacks, anyway.

Alright, I just switched back to Debian earlier tonight after my OpenSuSE installation abruptly died last night -- ironically, it died because i finally got my wireless working, and some update or another was crashing my X server - so i figured i'd switch back to Debian.

I've got ndiswrapper 1.9 installed, the drivers are loaded & it claims that the module is loaded - but it's not. Here is some of the output i'm getting:

Right now I'm trying to track down the ndiswrapper.ko file without any luck. I do have a ndiswrapper profile in /etc/modprobe.d (see above), but it hasn't been working properly. Any ideas or pointers out there? I'll let you know if stumble across anything myself.

Edit - oh, and by the way: iwconfig does not list wlan0, even though the /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper file lists it as that..

"ndiswrapper.ko" is the file name of the module with the ndiswrapper driver. It must be produced by compiling the ndiswrapper source code and inserted into your running kernel using modprobe. The fact that "lsmod |grep ndis" produces no output shows that this hasn't happened (and how could it, if you have no ndiswrapper.ko module to insert?). The lines you got from "cat /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper" are just directions for the hotplug system for how to insert a driver for certain devices on the pci bus (and the directions are not going to work until you come up with an ndiswrapper.ko module).

I had the same problem: ndiswrapper.ko missing under Debian and to solve that you should:
(the kernel module is not in the ndiswrapper-common package, but needs to be built with the module-assistant from the ndiswrapper-source package)

Sounds like this is just too hoary a problem to deal with. I'm experiencing the same thing with an Encore ENLWI-G. I'll post the dmesg response later. When I try "iwlist wlan0 scan" it comes back with "Interface doesn't support scanning."

dmesg:
[ 415.954715] ndiswrapper version 1.45 loaded (smp=yes)
[ 416.051738] ndiswrapper: driver mrv8000c (Marvell,02/22/2005,3.1.1.7) loaded
[ 416.052297] ACPI: Unable to derive IRQ for device 0000:04:04.0
[ 416.052303] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:04:04.0[Q]: no GSI - using IRQ 11
[ 416.053989] ndiswrapper: using IRQ 11
[ 416.856465] ndiswrapper (mp_init:263): couldn't initialize device: C0000001
[ 416.856478] ndiswrapper (pnp_start_device:440): Windows driver couldn't initialize the device (C0000001)
[ 416.856496] ndiswrapper (mp_halt:305): device e165e500 is not initialized - not halting
[ 416.856505] ndiswrapper: device eth%d removed
[ 416.856527] ACPI: Unable to derive IRQ for device 0000:04:04.0
[ 416.856540] ndiswrapper: probe of 0000:04:04.0 failed with error -22
[ 416.856600] usbcore: registered new interface driver ndiswrapper

i know this is a old post but im haveing the same exact problem but on slackware 12 and i have a dell wireless 1450 usb adapter. ive pretty much tryed everything i know and ive been searching for days. only thing i can find is people with the some exact error. the 1 i did read where the guy fixed it he just used ndiswrapper 1.38 instead of the newest version. and of course i tryed that also. the driver does say its installed and the device is preset but does not show up when i type "iwconfig", also just like Ben when i do "modprobe ndiswrapper" i get "FATAL: Module ndiswrapper not found."

any help at all will be greatly appreciated, thanks.

try to compile the driver from source,
that solved the problem for me :)

im still kinda new to linux so im not really sure what u mean by that. maybe explain a little?

also.. i realized that it made the ndiswrapper.ko module in "/lib/modules/2.6.21.5-smp/misc/" and modprobe trys to do it from "/lib/modules/2.6.21.5/misc/". i tryed simply copying it to the other folder and trying "modprobe ndiswrapper" again and it says something like "Invalid module format".

and if i search that error all i get is this
http://translate.google.com/translat...ial%26hs%3De73

google translate ofcourse, i can only read english.. doesnt seen to address my problem tho

Go and download the source code of ndiswrapper, unzip the archive and read the file called INSTALL inside to know how to compile and install it.

I am not telling you it is going to help this time, but usually, when a program is looking for some file at the wrong place, instead of copying it, it is usually better to create a symbolic link:

# cd /lib/modules/2.6.21.5/misc/
# ln -s /lib/modules/2.6.21.5-smp/misc/ndiswrapper.ko

first i tryed that and got the same error

the only INSTALL and README files that are in there are the default 1s from the original package i downloaded wich do not work because there is no make file. so i just assumed that i just place the files where they go and run "doinst.sh", im pretty sure it did nothing tho because "uname -r" gives me "2.6.21.5". and here is the doinst.sh scipt

i might be kinda noobish to this but im positive that did nothing. and if i try modprobe again i get the same thing as before.

now that i think about it.. when i installed slackware hugesmp.s wouldnt work, i kept getting a kernel panic(probaly cuz of my garbo pc) and booted it with huge.s instead. could this be why im getting these errors? pretty sure it explains why the modprobe trys to probe "/lib/modules/2.6.21.5/" instead of "/lib/modules/2.6.21.5-smp/".

EDIT:

i was right it was the hole smp shyt. thanks for the help anyway, i appreciate it.