Broadcom driver wi-fi issues with new user

[wh666-666]

Hi everyone. Just wanted to ask for some help here. Il start from the beginning, I decided quite a while ago to try linux and downloaded various live DVD's as its getting alot more user friendly than before. I wasnt keen on ubuntu (but it wouldnt install properly anyway on my laptop even though it did on my desktop, kept saying 'innit kernel panic'). Anyway finally settled on dreamlinux which is a debian based distro which i have on a seperate hdd (2 x hdd in same laptop, winxp on other hdd).

Although im knowledgable in MS products im totally new to linux so some of the terminology and commands are a bit hard to grasp at the mo so i apologise in advance for dumbness! Installed my ati driver fine (which was relatively painless which i wasnt expecting) and my ethernet works ok apart from slow loading pages, tried 'echo "alias net-pf-10 off" >> /etc/modprobe.conf' from another thread and that sped it up only a touch but i just cant get my wireless working whatsoever which i really need because my router is in a bit of an awkward place to be hardwired 24/7.

Im using an internal mini pci broadcom a/b/g 54 card (win driver: bcmwl5.inf). First of all i tried installing the driver as this distro has a wireless configuration control panel in an easy GUI for win driver installs but it always reports back after driver addition 'driver present: yes - Hardware present: no' Very odd (no problems with hardware, use same card in xp, where im typing from no probs)

Ive dug around and read a couple of threads giving advice for fwcutter. Ive tried using apt-get in a GUI interface on the panel and it will install everything i mark for install from download using ethernet port apart from fwcutter. It says 404 not found whenever i try. Same result if i type 'sudo apt-get install bcm43xx-fwcutter' in to the terminal. For some reason it wont connect to google or fwcutter ftp although it connects to most other site through ethernet albiet slowly, thinking maybe its DNS settings? If so any idea what the correct settings should be and how to apply them to the whole system??

I have looked at ndiswrapper and tried it. Dont know if im not using it correctly though and i steered towards fw-cutter because its supposed to be better for broadcom?

Sorry to ramble, just trying to provide detailed info as i know you all probably see the same questions alot but i would really appreciate assistance.

[Metaljaz]

Try this link. Click on the appropriate OS if you did install Ubuntu.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43xx

[wh666-666]

Nah im still on dreamlinux ... but im writing from xp until i get wireless on dreamlinux working .. progress though ... Ive got the driver showing up and hardware as present/yes.

Im using a hp dv8000 pavillion series laptop 64bit capable but 32bit compatible. Problem was when adding the driver bcmwl5.inf the system was automatically installing the bcmwl564.sys file when it needed just the bcmwl5.sys file. Had to search but finally got the files i needed and a small success.

So the hardware says its present. ndiswrapper/fw-cutter/all the commands ive tried on ubuntu forums says the driver is correct but whenever i try to activate it says the device cannot be activated, check connectivity, yada yada generic response ... Any ideas of what i should try next anyone?

[Metaljaz]

Maybe you need to blacklist the native drivers that were installed by dreamlinux. Even though ndiswrapper shows driver installed hardware present the system may still be trying to load the native driver causing confusion.
Worth a try.

[wh666-666]

Maybe yea ... ive had so many driver attempts il prob re-install and try again with the correct driver this time then try to activate the card again

Just out of interest how do you blacklist previous drivers that you dont want or need loading up? Is there any sort of generic command?

[Metaljaz]

To blacklist drivers:

edit the /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist file and add blacklist "name of driver" to the end of the file.

example:
sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist bcm43xx

Thats in Ubuntu

[wh666-666]

Ahhh many thanks meta. Thats actually a really simple command to remember .. thought it would be alot more complex. Does that go for all driver files or just wireless drivers?

Im actually writing from dreamlinux at the mo. Got so p*ssed off with the broadcom mini-pci card i tryed a netgear pcmcia card. Driver installed in under a minute, showed up properly as wlan0 and activated settings and online in just over a min .. only drawback is its 11mb so its rather slow .. but at least it works ... il try a couple more times to get this broadcom card working but it may come to the point when i have to get a netgear mini pci card .. if it works then il wipe my a*se with the broadcom card and mail it back to a "representative" .. If it doesnt then i know there is a problem with the mini pci slot .. Im just so annoyed that broadcoms site is more of a marketing site than a real help site and driver support/technical help especially cross platforms is so difficult, definetly puts me off their products in the future.

[remyforbes777]

For my internal broadcom wifi card I am using Linuxant drivers. They work fantistically. Its pretty easy to set up. Google Linuxant.

[wh666-666]

Thanks remy .. tried that multiple times and it didnt work ... broadcom makes me feel like writing all of their "representatives" hate mail in their respective languages .. Anyway it just says an error as if its the wrong file when i try and run it ..

I did try a different mini pci card (cisco) that i found lying around but even before posting it came up with "104 unsupported wireless card" .. Turns out its a dirty trick by HP to stop you using any card apart from the original one by locking the device number in the bios. Its still under warranty so i cant go as far as to alter the bios. I always thought HP was a supporter of unix/linux and novell but from reading in to other sources as well it seems as if they want to try to stop users from using any OS apart from MS by throwing as many hardware obstacles in the users path as possible which is incredibly unfair as software is my choice, not theirs!!
(another company who's made my sh*t list)


In all serioiusness would still apreciate help to get this card working and may need a bit of guiding as im still pretty new to it, i know wireless is a big request but anyone that could help me id be very grateful (bitorrent here i come?). Longshot but could it possibly be a problem with the pci to pci bridge, have no idea how to check this in linux btw?

[Metaljaz]

Does that go for all driver files or just wireless drivers?

All drivers. Just add the driver name after blacklist.

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist "driver filename"

[wh666-666]

Brilliant thanks ... easy command to remember .. might need to use it alot configuring hardware in the future

Still having problems getting my internal wireless card working though?? :(

[Metaljaz]

Not to sure where to point you since you are using dreamlinux. Don't know much about it. Sorry.

[wh666-666]

Sorry for the slow reply, i was just coming to a full conclusion before posting. I appreciated all of your efforts to help before but instead of concussions from banging my head agaisnt a wall Ive got a super fast netgear card now on a different laptop.

Dreamlinux is a debian based distro running a 2.6.18.1-kanotix-1
kernel. (lol after searching for a while i couldnt believe the command in terminal was as simple as uname -r to find the kernel version). I know some questions you guys hear about commands may seem simple but if you dont know them it is strange learning a new language in comparison to others like dos but dos and linux side by side linux commands are so much more simple so hopefully the learning curve will be easier than dos days.

Just an update if your interested btw and maybe to help others in the future with the same or similar problem ..

Resolved myself to the fact as I said that I probably wouldnt be able to get my broadcom wireless working on linux on my HP dv8000, some broadcom cards can be installed correctly, others appear to be completely incompatible. Got a spare laptop though, thinkpad x21 which i had a netgear ma521 11mb pcmcia card (which worked natively and didnt need a driver install) but that was painfully slow thats why before I was even considering invalidating my warranty on the HP by altering the bios to upgrade the wi-fi card. Managed to purchase a netgear wg511t pcmcia 108mb card and got it working tonight, yey!

Lol chuckling point was that it is easier to install on linux than windows! On windows the exe from netgears site doesnt work correctly, which i was trying to install on windows because i couldnt find a download for the *.inf file at first and if the exe had worked correctly i could have obtained the *.inf .. Finally managed to find the *.inf though and worked within a few seconds on linux 800mhz system on adding the *.inf .. Just for kicks I tried the same process of adding the *.inf manually through windows and waiting for the card to installate, got bored after a couple of minutes and went to make my dinner, was just finishing off by the time i came back to it quite a few minutes later ..

Anyway in short, thanks again for your help everyone