This HOWTO describes how to get Wifi working on your Dell Inspiron E1505/6400 laptop using Ndiswrapper. This applies if you have the Broadcom "Dell Wireless 1390 WLAN MiniCard", which as far as I know, is the cheaper, low-end version that Dell currently offers in this laptop. This HOWTO has been tested and works with both 32 bit and 64 bit ubuntu, and uses the exact same method for both.
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This HOWTO is what I needed to get the wireless working on my Dell Latitude 131L. You may prefer to read the original thread instead. At the end of this HOWTO, I have grouped all the code so you can load it into a shell script and execute.
IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT CLEANING YOUR SYSTEM:
One of the most common reasons that many people can't get their wireless working is because their system is in a state of chaos. If you have made ANY previous attempts to get your wireless working -- either using fwcutter, ndiswrapper, or the bcm43xx drivers -- this how-to will most likely not work UNTIL you reverse your previous changes. In many cases, it is much easier to simply reinstall ubuntu and come straight to this how-to. Alternatively, you can manually clean your system of the previous attempts, as outlined in various posts throughout this thread. But BE WARNED: If you have done ANY previous work on your wireless, there is almost no chance that this how-to will work unless you clean your system.
If you have a fresh install of Ubuntu, you need to remove any and all versions of Ndiswrapper that come installed by default on your system:
sudo rmmod ndiswrapper sudo apt-get remove ndiswrapper-utils
Don't worry if you get errors about not being able to find or remove these -- we're just making sure they're not present before we get started.
We'll need to install compiling tools (don't panic when you read that, just bear with me), the latest kernel headers, and then the source code for the latest ndiswrapper (seriously, don't panic. This will be very simple), and the wireless drivers from Dell.com.
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install build-essential sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r` wget http://ftp.us.dell.com/network/R151517.EXE
NOTE: The characters around uname -r are BACK TICS, NOT apostrophes. A back tic is usually located at the top left of your keyboard, to the left of the 1 key. The command WILL NOT WORK if you use apostrophes. Just copy/paste the commands from this how-to in to your terminal to avoid making typos.
At this point, you need to go to the ndiswrapper sourceforge site and get the latest version of the Ndiswrapper program. As of 1 April 2007, the latest version is 1.41:
wget http://internap.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/ndiswrapper/ndiswrapper-1.41.tar.gz
Attach:ndiswraper-1.41.tar.gz Δ
If that wget doesn't work, just go here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showf…group_id=93482
Uncompress the ndiswrapper source (in my example, the file name is ndiswrapper-1.41.tar.gz):
tar -xzvf ndiswrapper-1.41.tar.gz
Finally, we need to blacklist the broken and useless bcm43xx firmware drivers that try to load in a default ubuntu install:
sudo echo blacklist bcm43xx >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
sudo -s echo blacklist bcm43xx >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist exit
YOU MUST REBOOT NOW! (Actually, I did not on the Latitude 131L
Now we'll compile the Ndiswrapper program. In a terminal, go to the directory where you extracted ndiswrapper and execute the following:
sudo make uninstall
IMPORTANT: Do the above command multiple times. You can stop when you get the message that says something about no files or directories found.
sudo make sudo make install
If that worked, then you now have Ndiswrapper installed. Now we need to install the drivers. In a terminal, go to the directory where you have the R151517.EXE file:
unzip -a R151517.EXE
Now change directories (cd) to the DRIVER directory that was just extracted.
sudo ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf sudo ndiswrapper -l
You should see a message that says driver present, hardware detected
sudo ndiswrapper -m sudo modprobe ndiswrapper sudo echo ndiswrapper >> /etc/modules
Some users have reported the need to reboot here. I did on the Latitude L131
Your wifi light on your laptop should be illuminated, and you're all set! Try running this to see if your wireless card is functioning properly:
sudo iwlist scanning
Even if it doesn't detect any wireless networks in range, it will still tell you if linux is recognizing your wireless card properly. If you'd like a better way to scan for wireless networks, I'd suggest installing/using network-manager or wifi-radar.
#!/bin/sh # Remove old Ndiswrapper and bad driver rmmod ndiswrapper apt-get remove ndiswrapper-utils echo blacklist bcm43xx >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist # Get supporting applications apt-get update apt-get install build-essential apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r` wget http://ftp.us.dell.com/network/R151517.EXE wget http://internap.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/ndiswrapper/ndiswrapper-1.41.tar.gz # Build Ndiswrapper tar -xzvf ndiswrapper-1.41.tar.gz cd ndiswrapper-1.41 make uninstall make make install cd .. # install new broadcom driver mkdir broadcom cd broadcom unzip -a ../R151517.EXE cd DRIVERS ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf ndiswrapper -l ndiswrapper -m modprobe ndiswrapper echo ndiswrapper >> /etc/modules cd ../.. # Remove supporting directories rm -rf broadcom ndiswrapper-1.41
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