how to enable wireless on laptop

[calymea]

Hi, could someone tell me how to enable wireless networking on my "Acer 4060 Travelmate" laptop please? I have tried enabling it in network settings, but it won't enable. Maybe I'm doing something wrong or I've missed something. It also wont enable in the Live CD of PClinuxOS 2009 Gnome edition (or the KDE version on
Live CD). Thanks.

[milen]

Hello !

Maybe your wireless card needs a driver. Sometimes you need a different driver from the default for a specific card, or to activate one from the Hardware Drivers section. Did you try with the drivers in the Hardware Drivers section in Control Center? If there isn't something that you could use, take a look at this link: http://www.linuxmint.com/wiki/index.php/MintWifi Maybe you will find something helpful.

Greetings,
Milen

[calymea]

Hi thanks for the reply. Tried what you said, didn't work. Here is some more info- my card is a Intel 2200BG. It shows up when I type "lspci", but I can't seem to enable it. When I right click on Network Manager, the enable networking box is ticked but the enable wireless box is grayed out and can't be ticked. Left clicking doesn't bring up any option to enable wireless either. Can anyone help? Thanks.

[calymea]

Hi, here's some more info. Thanks.

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rod@rod-laptop ~ $ iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

eth1 radio off ESSID:""
Mode:Managed Channel:0 Access Point: Not-Associated
Bit Rate:0 kb/s Tx-Power=off Sensitivity=8/0
Retry limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

[milen]

Hello !

Did you try to make the ndiswrapper workaround from the MintWifi HowTo (it starts here: http://www.linuxmint.com/wiki/index.php ... the_Driver)? You have to find your windows wireless driver and load it in the ndiswrapper like it's described in the HowTo. Did it work?

Greetings,
Milen

[rich_roast]

eth1 radio off ESSID:""

I'm no expert but I'm guessing the radio is switched off. Many laptops have a button or slider switch for putting wireless on/off. Also, try looking in your PC's BIOS settings for any wireless settings.

The bad news is that, if you're laptop's like mine, the switch isn't detected by Linux and no amount of pushing it will ever switch that wireless back on again. Mine is an older laptop and needed some (bad) software installed to make the wireless button function at all. The bios won't enable it, having only the options of "totally off" or "whatever it's state was when the computer was last on". Needless to say, I switched it off one day and now my on board wireless is in a permanent state of off, barring me installing Windows again (not likely). Bah, it sucked anyway, I'm better off with my usb dongle.

There is a module called rfkill which might help with any radio buttons/switches whatever you have, but if it's not already installed (check lsmod | grep -i rfkill, I think) then it won't do any good as far as I know.

Good luck.

[kickass]

THANKS!

[Txnca]

You might also check out these settings.

Step one: In terminal

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sudo kate /etc/NetworkManager/nm-system-settings.conf

(kate is the editor in KDE. If you use Gnome it is Gedit)
Change the managed=false to managed=true
Then in terminal again;

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sudo killall nm-system-settings

Step Two: Again in terminal;

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sudo service network-manager stop
sudo kate /var/lib/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.state

With NetworkManager.state open, it should look something like this:

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[main]
NetworkingEnabled=false
WirelessEnabled=true
WWANEnabled=true

Change the NetworkingEnabled=false to NetworkingEnabled=true.
Then in terminal again;

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sudo service network-manager start

I don't know that it will help. Your settings in these files might be what I am suggesting you try, but if not and if it is a software issue maybe this will fix it.