[SOLVED] Wireless Help

[NeuB27]

My system seems to recognize my wireless card, or rather it shows up in 'lspci' but there is no wireless option under my Network Settings. I use a Zonet ZEW1602A card.

[spiderbatdad]

can't find much...http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=722629
this guy says he got it working with ndiswrapper...but you'll need the driver...usually a .exe file which you unwrap with a program like cabextract...ndis-gtk is also in synaptic, and is a graphical tool for helping you install the driver...I have been fortunate with wireless not to need either...use forum search tool for a how-to on ndiswrapper...

[anewguy]

There are a few other posts on this card, and they all say to use ndiswrapper. If you are not familiar with all of this, ndiswrapper is a package which allows you to use Windows network drivers in Linux.

The first thing you will need are the Windows drivers for your card. If you have a CD that came with the card, you should be able to find a drivers subfolder on it. It may contain subfolders for W2K, WXP, WXP64, etc. The driver files may be zipped in which case you will need to unzip them first. You might also try just downloading the driver files from the manufacturer's site. Usually this will consist of a .inf file and 1 or more .sys files. When you have found those files, copy them to your desktop, then proceed as follows:

Open a terminal window (some call it command line) via:

Applications/Accessories/Terminal

Once that window is open, do the following:

cd ~/Desktop <= change current directory to your desktop

ls <= will show the contents of the current directory

sudo ndiswrapper -i xxxxxx.inf <= that's a lower case "I" for install, and xxxxxx.inf should be replaced by the name of your driver .inf file as shown after the "ls" above

sudo depmod -a

sudo modprobe ndiswrapper

sudo ndiswrapper -m

sudo gedit /etc/modules

Add the following to the end of that file:

ndiswrapper

Save the file and exit the editor

Now, reboot and check under your network icon to see if your wireless shows.

[NeuB27]

Thank you a bunch to both of you, I tried those methods. They were slightly different to the methods I had tried before, but they didn't seem to work. My wireless still doesn't show up.

Random Question: I keep seeing help documentation and forum posts saying to access System > Administration > Device Manager .... I cannot find that, are they referring to System > Preferences > Hardware Information?

[anewguy]

(1) Yes, device manager IS hardware information on the System/Preferences menu.

(2) Post the output of lspci back here

(3) Post the output of ndiswrapper -l <= lower case "L" back here

(4) Check under System/Administration/Network and see if wireless shows there. If so, is roaming mode enabled?

We'll look at those things first, and work out from there.

[NeuB27]

Thank you so much for replying.
1. thanks
2. (the computer is off right now, and isn't connected to the internet anymore) but lspci did list the wireless card as attached, and gave drivers for it. I believe it was "05.02.0 Ethernet Controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88w8335 [Libertas] 802.11b/g Wireless (rev 03)" [from previous problems post]
3.(again)It said that the driver(which I wanted) was installed and the device(and id) was present.
4.No, thats what has me so confused, I followed these steps and nothing shows up. Not in network settings, nothing under the icon, even wlan0 hasn't shown up as an iwconfig, or anything else setting...

[anewguy]

Thank you so much for replying.
1. thanks
2. (the computer is off right now, and isn't connected to the internet anymore) but lspci did list the wireless card as attached, and gave drivers for it. I believe it was "05.02.0 Ethernet Controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88w8335 [Libertas] 802.11b/g Wireless (rev 03)" [from previous problems post]
3.(again)It said that the driver(which I wanted) was installed and the device(and id) was present.
4.No, thats what has me so confused, I followed these steps and nothing shows up. Not in network settings, nothing under the icon, even wlan0 hasn't shown up as an iwconfig, or anything else setting...

lspci won't show the driver, just the device. What happens with most of the wireless cards is they are recognized as hardware (that's why they show in lspci) but no drivers are installed (so the wireless doesn't show up anywhere).

I know they have multiple ways of doing things, but ndiswrapper is sort-of a fail-safe method of installing the drivers.

So, since we know the piece of hardware is recognized, but apparently no drivers are loaded, when you have the computer back on please post back here the result of:

sudo ndiswrapper -l

That will help in getting started trying to fix this.

[Tom--d]

First of all..

Do you have the right windows driver for your wireless card?

and yes.. we need the result of

ndiswrapper -l

[NeuB27]

Ndiswrapper lists the name of the driver that I installed, its name is netmw126, and it lists the id location of the device. I believe that it is the right driver, I am using 7.10 amd 64 and chose the xp64 driver from the manufacturer cd. I'll post the exact number in a moment.

[NeuB27]

from ndiswrapper -l
'
netmw126 : driver installed
device (11AB:1FAA) present
'
for some reason .. when I turned the computer on, it was listing a wireless option, roaming is enabled, however no networks appear, I know that there are at least two within range ( as I am using one to reply with my laptop ) I've tried to do the manual configuration before, and it did not work well ( something caused the OS to stop loading ) so if someone would like to help me get the roaming mode to work I would love it. Or alternately make a guess at what went wrong last time.
from lspci
'
05.02.0 Ethernet Controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88w8335 [Libertas] 802.11b/g Wireless (rev 03)
' same as before.
iwconfig has information for wlan0 now
'
IEEE 802.11g ESSID:off/any
Mode: Managed Channel:0 Access Point: Not-Associated
Bit Rate:1 Mb/s Sensitivity= -200 dBm
RTS thr=2346 B Fragment thr=2346 B
Power Management:off
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excesive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0
'
Let me know if there is any other information that can help, thanks again.