OK, here goes.

I am trying to run simplymepis3.3 that I got from the Linux magazine I just picked up.
I have a HP Pavilion z5150 with a 2Gig P4 proc, and 1Gig of memory.

Now, It starts up good and I have sound and everything else. The only thing I don't have is a wireless network. I look up my PCMCIA connections and it says that I have a wpc11 linksys card plugged in. So it is recognizing it. I do have power light on but no flashing network light. I try to find where to turn wireless networking on but I can't find it. I have looked and looked. I have found several places where I can change settings for it but it always says either there is no wireless network to be had or that it is turned off. Well, I knew that, How Do I Turn It On??

Also if someone could steer me in the right direction on how to save my desktop settings to my flash drive so I don't have to redo everything all the time, that would be appreciated also.

The standard place to deal with networking is on the MEPIS OS Center which you can reach through the main menu.

I had a lot of trouble with a PCMCIA card on this distro until I used the kernel 2.4.29 ("Older hardware") which can also be selected during installation. Once I used that I had no problem, and you might try choosing that option in Grub at boot. The PCMCIA driver is not always reliable with the 2.6 kernel, apparently.

On saving settings, I keep a separate partition for /home and most of the setting are automatically stored there and are picked up again if I have to reinstall. But beyond that I am clueless, sorry.

I looked all over in the OS center and could not find anything about turning on the wireless network. I may have overlooked it though I don't know, after 3 hours I just gave up.

I am running off a live CD right now that was why I was wondering about saving the settings. I am not familiar with running Linux from a CD so I figured someone would know seeing as there are so many distros that you can run from live CD's now days.

I read somewhere that looking in the "Mepis control center" would lead to a tab that would let me "turn on" the wireless network. My system recognizes my card but without the network "on" I figure that must be done first.

Thanks for the help,

I'm sorry, but I'm not sure what you are talking about, exactly.

The wireless network has two big components: the wireless access point and system, and your machine's wireless hardware and software. So what I can't tell from your post is whether there is a wireless network actually available. Do you have a home network (router, ISP, etc) set up, or are you in a location where there is one set up to which you have access? Have you already used wireless at your location, or know others who have? Do you have a strong enough signal? In other words, what is the wireless situation outside your computer?

Once we know the outside is working, then we can turn to the inside.

Sorry about the lack of info.

I have a home/office network set up that I have been using for 4 years or so and I have always had a good signal when using WinXP.

I have been using the WPC11 wireless card since the beginning and get a good signal throughout the house.

I tried to boot up last night using different builds (2.4 and 2.6) but I keep finding that although the system (simplymepis3.3) recognizes my card, under 2.6 I get the message that the wireless network is not on, and with the 2.4 one I get a message that there is no wireless network found. I will be trying to get some time where I can take my laptop to another location in the house to see if I can get a better signal, but even under the 2.6 one I was only getting the power light on the card with no flashing green light. For the network.

basicly, we have a good network, but either wireless is off (2.6) or no wireless network found (2.4). Need to do some moving around to see if that will work or not.

Is this more or less what you did?

Go to "Mepis OS Center," click on heading "Network Interfaces", there click on "Status" tab, look for "Wireless is on" statement at bottom, which will tell you whether it is on wlan0, eth0, etc. Then click the right tab for that location, make sure that "Start at system boot" and "Use DHCP for IP" are checked, then go back to "Status" tab and click on the start button for the right card.

What version is the WPC11? Version's 1-3 work with linux, version 4 does not. It has to do with the chipset in the adapter. If you do have version 4, you will need to use ndiswrapper to install the drivers, then set up your network.

I did just that. On the one version it told me that there was no wireless network to be had and the wireless area was grayed out, and on the other version (2.4 I believe) I would click on the "start" button for wireless but nothing happened. Just idled for a few seconds and then nothing.

I am not sure what version you are talking about, are you talking about the card itself. If so, I bought the card a long time ago (couple of years or so) no updates, I don't know if that helps or not, but it is older, that's for sure.

Would any of these problems be associated with the fact that I am running off a Live CD??? Just curious.

The live CD should have nothing to do with it.

L_o_B is right about turning to ndiswrapper, which is already part of SimplyMEPIS 3.3.

Get the driver (ends in *.inf) for your card. If you don't have it somewhere, you can download it from here: http://www.network-drivers.com/drivers/119/119777.htm Place the driver someplace where you can find it again easily.

Then open up a terminal, log in as root, and type

to remove the existing driver for the card in case it is there. Then

to install the latest version.

This command will check that your installed driver recognises the card

Exit and reboot, and watch to see what happens as the card is detected (or afterwards: type dmesg in a terminal and scan the output).

Detailed instructions on ndiswrapper are available here: http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/p.../Installation. There is also a lot on this forum from people who a lot more than I do about all this (I hope I have no mistakes...).

Good luck.

I thought the card was recognized already. I looked in the control center and it states that there is a linksys wpc11 card installed??

I will follow your direction and see if that works.

Thanks,