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Friday, April 11, 2008

NDISwrapper In Hardy Heron

When the Dell 1501 first came out there were no native wireless drivers for the internal Broadcom chipset, so NDiswrapper was the only way to get wireless working. NDiswrapper uses a wireless devices' Windows driver in Linux. It works surprisingly well. Using NDiswrapper allows you to run the Broadcom card in your Dell 1501 at full speed and connect to certain networks that the native Broadcom driver can't. In Hardy Heron there was a slight problem with NDiswrapper. I found the fix to get ssb from loading before NDiswrapper from this forum post. Thanks to Ubuntu Forum user Mazza558, NDiswrapper is working again on the Dell 1501.

If you are using the native Broadcom driver via the Driver Manager and it's working for all your day to day needs, I wouldn't recommend taking the time to change drivers.

If you have already enabled the Broadcom restricted driver, uninstall it before attempting this guide.


Step 1: Stop ssb From Loading Before NDISwrapper
Make a script for NDISwrapper's fix
In a terminal type:
sudo gedit /etc/init.d/wirelessfix.sh

Paste this into the file:
#!/bin/bash

modprobe -r b44
modprobe -r b43
modprobe -r ssb
modprobe -r ndiswrapper
modprobe ndiswrapper
modprobe b44

Point the terminal to your init.d file and make your script exectuable:
In a terminal type:
cd /etc/init.d/ && sudo chmod 755 wirelessfix.sh

Update and make it stick:
In a terminal type:
sudo update-rc.d wirelessfix.sh defaults

Then reboot
In a terminal type:
sudo reboot


Step 2: Get Needed Packages
To install ndiswrapper
In a terminal type:
sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper-utils-1.9 ndiswrapper-common

or you can also try:
sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper-utils-1.9* ndiswrapper-common

***If the terminal outputs an error message, telling you NDISwrapper could not be found, insert the Ubuntu disc you used to install Hardy Heron and manually search for the file.



Get the Windows driver for your Dell 1501
In a terminal type:
wget http://ftp.us.dell.com/network/R140747.EXE


Step 3: Get Everything Ready
Now we will make a folder.
In a terminal type:
mkdir ~/.drivers

Now we will move R140747.EXE (the Dell driver), to the folder we just made.
In a terminal type:
mv ~/R140747.EXE ~/.drivers


STEP 4: Driver Setup
In order for us to unzip the R140747.EXE driver we need to point your terminal to the /.driver folder.
In a terminal type:
cd ~/.drivers

Unzip the R140747.EXE driver
In a terminal type:
unzip -a R140747.EXE

We need to point your terminal to the DRIVER folder we just unzipped
In a terminal type:
cd ~/.drivers/DRIVER


Step 5: Configure The Windows driver With NDISwrapper
Now install the Windows driver
In a terminal type:
sudo ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf
Then:
sudo ndiswrapper -l (that is a lowercase L)

You should see a message that says driver present, hardware detected.

Now finish installing the driver
In a terminal type:
sudo ndiswrapper -m
Then:
sudo modprobe ndiswrapper

YOU MUST REBOOT NOW!
In a terminal type:
sudo reboot

STEP 6: TEST WIRELESS
Your wifi light on your laptop should be illuminated. If not, you can always turn it on and off with the Fn+F2 (Function & F2 Key) and you're all set! Try running this to see if your wireless card is functioning properly.

In a terminal type:
sudo iwlist scanning
edited by pHreaksYcle

56 comments:

Mitchell McKenna said...

Haven't tried NDISwrapper, using the Broadcom driver via the Restricted Driver Manager.

My wireless is much slower this way compared to native driver in Windows. Anyone else having this problem with the that driver?
(I'm considering trying the NDISwrapper way, suggestions?)

ekonomikz said...

Thanks, The native driver sucks!

James Gadsby said...

Hi, this is Mazza558 from the Ubuntu forums,

I'm glad that you found my guide - I've been watching this blog for a while. Unfortunately I couldn't post comments due to a bug in blogger for some reason. I would have posted earlier otherwise.

redDEAD said...

Mazza558 you can always hit me up at redDEADresolve at Gmail

Panameño said...

HI i've follow all the steps, including the last reboot, after this reboot, it suppose that the Wi-Fi light will be truned on, but it doesn't. I read and tried pressing Fn+F2,but it doesn't work. any advice?

zobrazovanemeno said...

I must confirm, that this guide didnt work for me either, though my WiFi light is on. I tried using the native driver and B43 before this guide, but with no success... I did disable the native broadcom driver and rebooted...

redDEAD said...

I must confirm this guide does work. If your having trouble with the guide your forgetting or messing up a step.

Dmitriy said...

i get the following error

"E: Couldn't find package ndiswrapper-utils-1.9"

Unknown said...

I tried this last night on an Inpsiron 1501 and it worked. Thank goodness I had an Ethernet cable lying around.

zobrazovanemeno said...

Okay, so can I follow it again without fearing that I would mess something up? I know I sound like a noob, but the truth is, that I am a noob when it comes to Linux :D

Unknown said...

Hello -- Thanks for the advice. When i go to configure under connection properties, or check the wireless list w/in terminal, i receive "The interface does not exist..."
My WLAN light is on, and powers on and off (when i started it did not), but i am unable to change connected networks.
Any advice?
Thanks,
James

Igor said...

This works till you suspend...
Laptop users should consider adding
wirelessfix.sh to /etc/resume.d. This way wireless will be fully operational after resume.
Script in resume.d should executed last, so name it like "99-wirelessfix.sh".

Igor said...

UPDATE
Putting scripts in /etc/acpi/resume.d/ doesn't work anymore as Hardy uses pm-utils for suspend/hibernate.
The solution is to place this script in /etc/pm/sleep.d/

Script should look like this
#!/bin/bash
case $1 in
hibernate)
;;
suspend)
;;
thaw)
#your code here
;;
resume)
#your code here
;;
*)
;;
esac

(Taken from OpenSuse site)

Anonymous said...

It works!
I can connect to open wireless networks but I can't connect to my wpapsk encrypted signal ...
I'm happy!

zobrazovanemeno said...

I give up. Ive reinstalled Hardy like 4 times and still with no success. With B43 my pc was able to see my wireless network for a while (later iwlist scanning gave No scan results), but was unable to connect, so I uninstalled it and rebooted. Than I followed this guide, iwlist scanning gives "No scan results" on wlan0 and it doesnt work even if I configure the wireless network manually. Atleast it works on the wired mode with no trouble.

Smirjl said...

First of all, sorry for my bad english. I can read it perfect but i don't use it in my daily life.

This is a wonderfull tutorial. It help me a lot.

Grundic said...

Great guide, my wireless works now on my Wireless 1500 Draft 802.11n!

Grundic said...

Great guide, my wireless works now on my Wireless 1500 Draft 802.11n!

Jeremy said...

The restricted drivers didn't work for me, but I'm running a Vostro 1000 (basically a 1501 in black) with a DW1490 card.

I used this guide without any changes and the wifi light came on immediately.

Thanks.

Unknown said...

Sweet! As a newbie to Linux, this guide really helped.

For anyone who got a message saying that ndiswrapper could not be found or something, you just have to insert your CD/DVD of ubuntu and search for the file it can't find, and then double-click it and it will install it.

Then go back and try the step that didn't work again.

Cheers, and thanks for the guide!

OOD team project said...

Thanks,it works perfectly for me! All you need to add to the tutorial is to install ndiswrapper from the Ubuntu disk part. And thanks to igor for reminding of the supension problem. I used restrictive driver manager on 7.10 once, but it really sucked, so I had to switch back to ndiswrapper this time, I'm really happy I found a walkthrough here! Cheers! I hope in the future Linux distributions can go with perfect native drivers for wireless cards.

David said...

Step 2: Get Needed Packages
To install ndiswrapper
In a terminal type:
sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper-utils-1.9 ndiswrapper-common

I was able to download from the Ubuntu repository the ndiswrapper-utils-1.9. Unfortunately, you have to add a character. ndiswrapper-utils-1.9*
Ubuntu will make updates and patches to the file, so the name will change.

Unknown said...

It works! After trying on so many different guides, it finally works! Hooray! Thanks.

bagelong said...

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I installed Hardy on a brand new Vostro 1700 and searched for a week trying to get the Broadcom wireless card working with ndiswrapper. I finally resorted to installong 7.10 and got it working. Then, I came across this fix and thought I'd give it one more try. I had a clue that the problem involved ssb, but I am too much of a noob to figure it out myself. I reinstalled 8.04 and lo and behold, it worked! Yee-Haw (I am from Texas)!!! and WHEW. I am one happy camper!

alibabahck said...

Good work!!! Saved the day again! Works perfectly.

Unknown said...

Hey red!

Thanks for the guide. I havent tested yet, but from what it seems that I can detect some of the surrounding WiFi areas, it must be working!

Thanks for the great guide, and keep this going up!

ladislaus said...

Hi,
first of all thanks for this fanatastic blog. It hlped me to solve most of my issues on my Inspiron 1501.

I have found a possible solution for the problem when you can see the wireless networks but cannot connect.
You have to check your keyring if the wep key for the network is the same as the one you type into the prompt.
From some reason in my case there was a completely different key set after HH install.

Moe said...

I love you redDEAD, in a informatic way.
Thank you

Muchas Gracias desde México.

redDEAD said...

Moe

thanks even though that comment was mas puto.

image empire said...

Hi,

I have an issue with the wirelessfix.sh

i'v done all the steps, but when my system starts the network driver still is ssb.

every time i want to surf on internet, i need to modprobe -r everything and then modprobe ndiswrapper and modprobe b44,then all works fine.

i know that is very simple to solve it
but i'm new to linux!

any suggestion???

Anonymous said...

This guide is awesome. I am new to linux, and have just switched because of all of the problems I have been having with Vista. I tried using the restricted driver option in Hardy, and I could only connect @ 1Mb/s. I am now connecting @ a beautiful 36Mb/s.

image empire said...

I already solve the problem!

this method works for me

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=786541

post #4

is more simple than updating-rc.d

Gordon Braun said...

Tried you way four times--final result is always the same "does not support scanning" Any other suggestions? Ndis downloaded and installed correctly, as did the driver. Wireless network doesn't show up at all.
Thanks

Gaucho said...

Thank you RedDead, you help me again... ;-)

carls said...

A little help please..

After thrashing around for weeks, it's almost sure that the BCM43xx driver was installed at some point. But where ? And how to follow the advice given early on in the blog:

***snip***

If you have already enabled the Broadcom restricted driver, uninstall it before attempting this guide.

***end snip***

Would happily accepts any tips, scripts, or conclusion that I'm just too stupid for this.

Carls

Anonymous said...

Here's a little tip for anyone trying to do this using 64 bit ubuntu. When downloading the the driver, you need to change the download location to R151517.exe, or else it might not work very well.

Unknown said...

Guide worked great for my E1505!

JP said...

The thing is, I am an idiot. I don't even know what a register is. Can someone explain? Screenshots maybe? My Ubuntu 8.04 does not recognize my Linksys WRT54G and all this stuff seems a bit beyond me.

JP said...

oops..I mean I don't know what a terminal is either. Yikes. Any advice?

john weis said...

Thanks so much guys...this helped tremendously, and now another one of my friends will try Ubuntu!

Emalice said...

Hey RedDEAD

Thank you very myuch for your blog, you are doing a great job.

However i have a problem with setting up the wi-fi on my inspiron 1501.

I have followed the guide posted here, using R151517 since i am running the 64 bit version.

On step 5, after doing ndiswrapper -l it states the installed driver, but not a word about the harware. After reboot, the wifi still does not work. And even more intriguing, the proprietary broadcom driver that appeared some time ago in my "restricted drivers" menu is now gone, it disappeared one day, don't remember when exactly.

Would you have any thoughts on that ?

Terry S said...

Thank you so much ! This worked for me after many nights of banging my head against a wall !

Lucas Ramos said...

Whooaaaa!!! :D

Thank you very much!!!
You saved my life and my computers life.
I was almost kicking it out trough the window!

You can't imagine how you made me happy.

\o/

Unknown said...

Hey, this blog rocks! But i have a problem. I did everything right and it works, but i cant connect to networks. I can scan, but not connect. :( Any sugestions? :(

Bigbrovar said...

i just installed ubuntu on the laptop of a female colleague at work .. worked like a charm .. so just so u know .. ur guide as succeeded in freeing one more person from the horrors of vista .. thanks

Unknown said...

This is so weird. I used this guide before to get my wireless up and running. I reinstalled ubuntu, and did exactly what the guide told me, and it's not working.

anyone have any ideas?

Fabio said...

Yeaah it works, i was using fwcutter installed by default in hardy, and my network speed was just of 1mb ... that sucked. Ubuntu let me down on that . i make all the updates, always expecting the correction of this bug , since hardy was released. Many people does not even notice that, if its is the default driver installed automatically by the system they should correct that.


Now i get 54 mb, pretty simple how to, thanks a lot. this article is "pdfed" for posterity hehe
see ya

Fabio said...

Yeaah it works... I was using fwcutter installed by default in hardy, and my network speed was just of 1mb ... that sucked. Ubuntu let me down on that . i make all the updates, always expecting the correction of this bug , since hardy was released. Many people does not even notice that, if its is the default driver installed automatically by the system they should correct that.


Now i get 54 mb, pretty simple how to, thanks a lot. this article is "pdfed" for posterity hehe
see ya

Fabio said...

Yeaah it works, i was using fwcutter installed by default in hardy, and my network speed was just of 1mb ... that sucked. Ubuntu let me down on that . i make all the updates, always expecting the correction of this bug , since hardy was released. Many people does not even notice that, if its is the default driver installed automatically by the system they should correct that.


Now i get 54 mb, pretty simple how to, thanks a lot. this article is "pdfed" for posterity hehe
see ya

Unknown said...

I tried using this guide as well as others to get my Inspiron E1505 working.. Broadcomm b43XX chipset. No luck the first time with ubuntu intrepid.

Did a fresh install to try again. With the first try and with the default clean install not even the Wireless indicator on the laptop was on.

This time, all the farther I got in the setup was the first part


Step 1: Stop ssb From Loading Before NDISwrapper
Make a script for NDISwrapper's fix
In a terminal type:
sudo gedit /etc/init.d/wirelessfix.sh

Paste this into the file:
#!/bin/bash

modprobe -r b44
modprobe -r b43
modprobe -r ssb
modprobe -r ndiswrapper
modprobe ndiswrapper
modprobe b44

Point the terminal to your init.d file and make your script exectuable:
In a terminal type:
cd /etc/init.d/ && sudo chmod 755 wirelessfix.sh

Update and make it stick:
In a terminal type:
sudo update-rc.d wirelessfix.sh defaults

Then reboot
In a terminal type:
sudo reboot


On reboot, I noticed the WiFi indicator was on. I hit connect to a hidden network, just to see, typed in the SID, and after a few seconds it started trying to connect. Sure enough it connected and the Wireless Manager is also showing other networks which means the scanning mode is working.

Pure.mind.slave said...

I was very happy to find out that this guide works on Intrepid for me :)

David said...

I found a GUI version that will install the driver for you. Well you still have to download the Windows driver.
In Ubuntu goto
Applications -> Add/remove...
Type in ndiswrapper in the search
You should get Windows Wireless driver as the installable program. Put a checkmark beside it and click on the Apply Changes button below it. This works for my 1501 as well as my main computer.
The program is located in
System -> Administration -> Windows Wireless Drivers
All you have to do here is find the driver file and install it.
Hope this helps.

Sylvain Lamoureux said...

Thanks for these instructions. This worked flawlessly on an Inspiron 1520.

Sylvain Lamoureux said...

forgot to mention I this just worked using 8.10

Unknown said...

When i try to run the line
unzip -a R140747.EXE
I get the below error


Archive: R140747.EXE
End-of-central-directory signature not found. Either this file is not
a zipfile, or it constitutes one disk of a multi-part archive. In the
latter case the central directory and zipfile comment will be found on
the last disk(s) of this archive.
unzip: cannot find zipfile directory in one of R140747.EXE or
R140747.EXE.zip, and cannot find R140747.EXE.ZIP, period.



Please help

Unknown said...

Great guide. I have been using Ubuntu for about two days now (total), and it was pretty easy to follow.

I ran into a problem of not being able to download the ndiswrapper by using the terminal, so I read somewhere else that you can download it simply using the synaptic package manager. Go to system, administrator, then click on synaptic package manager. Click the reload button to reload all of the files that it has, this may take a few minutes for the reloaded updates. THen, just start typing ndiswrapper, and suggestions will pop up in the box below.

Choose the ndiswrapper utils 1.9 and double click it. It will pop up with a window saying you need to install another part, just hit mark, and hit ok. THen, just hit Apply and it will install ndiswrapper for you. THen, continue with the rest of the work explained by the blog. hope this helps