Archive for February, 2006

ndiswrapper, wrapping windows wireless driver

Sunday, February 12th, 2006

the case

you wanna go online wirelessly using linux. however, your wireless card is somehow sluggish or not functioning at all. most likely, you’re suffering the common lack-of-a-driver syndrome. this syndrome is hazardous to your surfing habit.

the solution, hopefully

assuming ndiswrapper installed in your distro, you can try these simple steps:

  1. find the driver, usually an inf file. or if you have it in exe, you can use wine to install it in your linux, which you then can take the driver. e.g. $ wine /windows/D/My\ Documents/Progs/IBM/1rwc88ww.exe. this command will install the driver, i.e. w70n501.inf, in the ./.wine/drive_c/DRIVERS/WIN/WLLANINT/PROW2100/DRIVERS, assuming you’re using centrino on ibm r40.
  2. install the driver using ndiswrapper, # ndiswrapper -i ./.wine/drive_c/DRIVERS/WIN/WLLANINT/PROW2100/DRIVERS/w70n501.inf.
  3. check whether the driver has been installed successfully, # ndiswrapper -l. it should give this output: Installed ndis drivers: w70n501 driver present, hardware present.
  4. write the configuration to the modprobe, # ndiswrapper -m. then activate the ndiswrapper module, # /sbin/modprobe ndiswrapper. check with dmesg command.
  5. use kinternet. left-click on it, settings, configure with yast2, assuming you’re using suse 10. choose network card, then choose your wireless card. you will see wlan0 as the interface on your kinternet. click on it.
  6. scan and connect to the available network. click wireless connection, scan for wireless networks. choose a network, then click connect, ok. hopefully you’re connected to the cyber world by now… :-)

Posted in Web/Tech | No Comments »