Dell Wireless 1397 WLAN Mini-Card Issue

[felicitygrad2010]

Hello i recently installed Linuxmint KDE Isadora on my Dell Inspiron laptop and have not been able to get the wireless card to work. I have installed fwcutter and still no luck... I dont have a ethernet hook-up can someone help me figure out why i cant connect to my wireless internet??

[Old Ruler]

You may have to use NDISwrapper. It depends which wireless card you have. This ubuntu Community Documentation page:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiD ... er/bcm43xx

Seems to have all the information you'll need.

[piratesmack]

I have the same wireless.

The chipset is BCM4312 [14e4:4315]

You have a few options

Option 1 - Broadcom-STA:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install bcmwl-kernel-source

Option 2 - b43:
-install the alternative 'LP-PHY' b43 firmware (Instructions here)
-You'll also need to install the 2.6.35.4 kernel from here:
http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/ma ... -maverick/ (See http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 85&start=0)

Option 3 - Ndiswrapper:
-Use this Windows driver:
ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/network/DELL_MULTI-DEVICE_A23_R208883.exe

Option 4 - If you still can't get it working after trying all of the above, you can try another distro:
Here is a very short list of some distros I've tried where wireless 'just works' out of the box:
-PCLinuxOS
-Knoppix
-xPud
-This special Puppy 4.3.1 mod:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=50570

[felicitygrad2010]

Wireless began working but only for like 5 minutes then quit... And now the wireless is not working at all ill try the ndiswrapper and see if it works...

[Gramps50]

Hello i recently installed Linuxmint KDE Isadora on my Dell Inspiron laptop and have not been able to get the wireless card to work. I have installed fwcutter and still no luck... I dont have a ethernet hook-up can someone help me figure out why i cant connect to my wireless internet??

Your gonna need a wired ethernet connection inorder to download the required drivers

[neeer.vana]

i am a linux beginner . i installed linuxmint cinnamon. the wireless firmware (i have a dell wireless 1397 wlan mini-card)is missing. i searched for it but could not find it. need help plz.

[pfd9100]

I was having the same issue upon installation on my M4400. I expected it as the RC note on teh page stated there were upstream kernel and driver issues with b43 based cards.
Here is what I did.
Installed LM13_KDE (RC) from teh DVD using a wired connection.
After rebooting into the new system I did ALL the updates and selected the backports as I always do in the sources manager.
Then updated again. then installed (using the software manager) the firmware-b43-lpphy-installer, which also in turn installs the b43 fw cutter.
Reboot. Then all worked for as you said about 5 minutes. dmesg revealed the failure of the firmware and unable to reinitialize the card again. I then used the hardware switch on the dell machine to disable the wireless card, and re-enable it and it started again.
The kernel update the next day solved the issue and my wireless now works without hiccup.
(broke my bluetooth, but that is another issue)

Hope this helps a little...