Trying to setup 2 laptops with wifi

DJRWolf

June 6, 2010 9:00:36 PM

I put Mint 9 Main 64-bit on the laptops for both of a friends teen kids and I'm having trouble getting them to connect to Wifi.

I got the first one (Acer) up to the point where I downloaded and installed (with ndiswrapper) the windows wireless drivers from Acer's web site and I installed Wicd after asking on Mint Help IRC for what program to use. He is using a 2Wire DSL modem/router combo and it see's the router and seeing as it is 4 feet away a very strong signal. When I put in the passphrase it keeps saying it is incorrect even though it is a default one that the router comes with and I did check that it was on. The encryption is WEP-Open.

The second one (HP) I have not yet installed the drivers but I did get Wicd on it by the time I needed to stop working on them. I am anticipating the same problem with it.

I'll be using my friends desktop to hop on the Mint Help IRC channel wail I work on the laptops later tonight (he should be home around 9PM eastern US) if anyone wants to hop on that to help me. Will be under the user name "lxde" as the desktop is a PIII 933MHz system with Mint 8 LXDE

More about : setup laptops wifi

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skittle

June 6, 2010 9:09:44 PM

for starters dont use wep, takes all of about 2minutes to break it

also need to know the model of laptop or at least which wireless card/chipset it is. avoid ndiswrapper if possible! please post output of iwconfig and ifconfig.

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jrdbrown524

June 7, 2010 2:28:28 AM

I agree with skittle, check the wifi card being used ensure that it is capable. Also turnoff the firewall and SELinux if it is on.

Good luck

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DJRWolf

June 7, 2010 2:33:07 AM

Laptop #1: Acer Aspire 4330 with a Atheros wireless adaptor. I managed to download and install the .inf driver on Friday and was just unable to connect (with "wicd") to the wireless router. It kept saying "bad password" when I put in the WEP-Open key.

Laptop #2: HP Pavilion 6105us with a Broadcom wireless adaptor. I went to download the driver from HP and it came as a .exe file. Archive manager could not open it so I could not install the driver.

Any suggestions?

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skittle

June 7, 2010 3:48:31 AM

seriously dont try to use windows stuff... avoid it if at all possible!!!

Atheros has good open source linux support in the madwifi driver
many broadcom chips are supported with native b43 driver.

In order to go further we need to know what chipset is used in the wificards (exact chipset not just vendor)
please install the package "lshw" and post the output of

sudo lshw -class network

and again DONT USE WINDOWS BINARY DRIVERS IF YOU CAN AVOID IT!!!

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