Wireless Tips - Revision history

Aradan at 02:51, 7 November 2013

2013-11-07T02:51:17Z

Lynnae: /* Wireless not working? Try these tips! */

2012-12-29T00:34:47Z

Wireless not working? Try these tips!

Paulm at 20:07, 24 January 2012

2012-01-24T20:07:53Z

Paulm: /* Wireless not working? Try these tips! */

2012-01-24T20:06:09Z

Wireless not working? Try these tips!

Scellef at 02:17, 31 August 2011

2011-08-31T02:17:41Z

Sophia at 21:19, 11 November 2010

2010-11-11T21:19:13Z

Ali: updated link

2010-07-10T19:02:25Z

updated link

Manseau at 17:35, 11 May 2010

2010-05-11T17:35:09Z

Manseau at 17:33, 11 May 2010

2010-05-11T17:33:17Z

Manseau at 17:31, 11 May 2010

2010-05-11T17:31:57Z

@@ Line 140: / Line 140: @@
 |}
-[[Category: Laptops]]
+[[Category: Laptops Archive]]
 [[Category:Tech support]]

@@ Line 79: / Line 79: @@
 |style="text-align:center" width="20%"|'''Try a Newer liveCD'''
 |style="text-align:left" width="80%"|Normally we use Ubuntu 10.04 on all our systems, but some newer wireless cards are not supported in this version. Use a live CD of the latest Ubuntu version (currently 11.04), and see if the card works.
 |-
 |style="text-align:center" width="20%"|'''Try Using ndiswrapper'''

@@ Line 128: / Line 128: @@
 |-
 |style="text-align:center" width="20%"|'''Are we really desperate yet?'''
-Sometimes a more mainstream wireless card could be the answer or perhaps a loose antenna connection could be the culprit.
+|style="text-align:left" width="80%"|Sometimes a more mainstream wireless card could be the answer or perhaps a loose antenna connection could be the culprit.
 |-
 |}

@@ Line 48: / Line 48: @@
            Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0
 </pre>
-The above example shows 3 important things: (1) that your wireless interface is ''eth1'', (2) that ''eth0'' is your wired network (because it reads "no wireless extension"), and (3) that your wireless is turned off ("radio off").  When you see "radio off" this generally means there's a physical button somewhere on the laptop that is currently in the off position.  If you switched on the wireless and then ran '''iwconfig''' you might see something like this:
+The above example shows 3 important things: (1) that your wireless interface is ''eth1'', (2) that ''eth0'' is your wired network (because it reads "no wireless extension"), and (3) that your wireless is turned off ("radio off").  When you see "radio off" this generally means there's a physical button somewhere on the laptop that is currently in the off position.
 <pre>
   eth1      IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"freegeek"
@@ Line 75: / Line 78: @@
 |-
 |style="text-align:center" width="20%"|'''Try a Newer liveCD'''
-|style="text-align:left" width="80%"|Normally we use Ubuntu 8.04 on all our systems, but some newer wireless cards are not supported in this version. Use a live CD of the latest Ubuntu version (currently 9.04), and see if the card works.
+|style="text-align:left" width="80%"|Normally we use Ubuntu 10.04 on all our systems, but some newer wireless cards are not supported in this version. Use a live CD of the latest Ubuntu version (currently 11.04), and see if the card works.
 |-
 |style="text-align:center" width="20%"|'''Try Using ndiswrapper'''
@@ Line 83: / Line 86: @@
 |style="text-align:left" width="80%"|sudo gedit /etc/network/interfaces
 Then remove all lines but lo.
 |-
 |style="text-align:center" width="20%"|'''Are we really desperate yet?'''
-|style="text-align:left" width="80%"|Sometimes a more mainstream wireless card could be the answer or perhaps a loose antenna connection could be the culprit.
+Sometimes a more mainstream wireless card could be the answer or perhaps a loose antenna connection could be the culprit.
 |-
 |}

@@ Line 2: / Line 2: @@
-{|class="wikitable" style="text-align:center" font-size="90%" border=".05" cellpadding=".4" width=100%  valign="top"
+{| border="1" fontname="Nimbus Sans" fontsize="12" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="1"
 |style="text-align:center" width="20%"|'''Look For A Physical Button'''
 |style="text-align:left" width="80%"|All too frequently, one will spend a whole bunch of time trying to configure a seemingly non-functional wireless only to realize later that there was a much simpler solution.  First, look for a button or switch or combination of keys to activate/deactivate the wireless.  For example, is there a button above the keyboard?  a switch on the side?  maybe Fn + F5 turns the wireless on and off? A wireless antenna icon on the laptop is also a good clue, especially if it is illuminated.

@@ Line 12: / Line 12: @@
 |style="text-align:left" width="80%"|Check out the BIOS settings. Sometimes there is an option in BIOS to disable/enable a mini-PCI or Wireless device.  If so, make sure that you enable it.
 |-
-|style="text-align:center" width="20%"|'''lspci Is Your Friend'''|
+|style="text-align:center" width="20%"|'''lspci Is Your Friend'''
 |style="text-align:left" width="80%" |The '''lspci''' command  is a utility for displaying information about all PCI buses in the system and all devices connected to them.  It will tell you about your wireless card, if there is one installed.  In particular, it will tell you whether your wireless card has a Broadcom chipset (which, if it does, you'll need to install some stuff - see below).  The following example is the output from running '''lspci''' and it demonstrates that the Wireless card has a Broadcom chipset (see the words "Broadcom" and "Wireless" in the same line?).

@@ Line 7: / Line 7: @@
 |-
 |style="text-align:center" width="20%"|'''For these wireless cards: Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG and 2915ABG using the lpw2200 driver'''
-|style="text-align:left" width="80%"|The indicator light for the Wifi on/off switch does not come on.This confuses quite a few customers (who have turned off their Wifi but do not know how to verify that they have done so). The solution can be found at the following link [http://wiki.freegeek.org/index.php/Ipw2200_wifi_led With thanks to Levi for the fix.]
+|style="text-align:left" width="80%"|The indicator light for the Wifi on/off switch does not come on.This confuses quite a few customers (who have turned off their Wifi but do not know how to verify that they have done so). The solution can be found at the following link [http://wiki.freegeek.org/index.php/Enabling_LEDs_on_Intel_Wireless_Cards With thanks to Levi for the fix.]
 |-
 |style="text-align:center" width="20%"|'''BIOS Trickery'''