[solved]Broadcom BCM43231: ndiswrapper not working.

[CaptainFantasmic]

Okay ladies and gentlemen, I have a tale as old as time, one you've most likely heard before: My Broadcom BCM43231 isn't working with linux.

But that's not why I'm here, no.

I'm sure I can get it to work by installing the windows drivers with ndiswrapper, but as it says in the title, ndiswrapper just doesn't work. Every time I check if it's there with

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ndiswrapper -v

it replies with something along the lines of "ndiswrapper isn't a program, blah, blah, blah, please use sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper-common", and I do, yet, it does nothing at all. After I do that I try again, and it does the same thing. So I looked around and tried installing the source code, I downloaded the source, then opened the folder as root, and opened a command line and followed the instructions to the letter.

First, "make uninstall":

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rm -f /usr/share/man/man8/ndiswrapper.8
rm -f /usr/share/man/man8/loadndisdriver.8
make -C driver uninstall
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/patrick/Desktop/wireless/ndiswrapper-1.59/driver'
rm -f /lib/modules/3.13.0-24-generic/misc/ndiswrapper.ko
/sbin/depmod -a 3.13.0-24-generic
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/patrick/Desktop/wireless/ndiswrapper-1.59/driver'
make -C utils uninstall
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/patrick/Desktop/wireless/ndiswrapper-1.59/utils'
rm -f /sbin/loadndisdriver
rm -f /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper
rm -f /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper-buginfo
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/patrick/Desktop/wireless/ndiswrapper-1.59/utils'

I figured that was fine, since it didn't say anything was wrong.
Next, "make":

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make -C utils
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/patrick/Desktop/wireless/ndiswrapper-1.59/utils'
gcc -g -Wall -I../driver  -o loadndisdriver loadndisdriver.c
loadndisdriver.c:15:20: fatal error: stdlib.h: No such file or directory
 #include <stdlib.h>
                    ^
compilation terminated.
make[1]: *** [loadndisdriver] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/patrick/Desktop/wireless/ndiswrapper-1.59/utils'
make: *** [utils] Error 2

Seeing as I have no idea what that meant, I looked around further because it's obvious the install didn't work. Next I tried downloading everything related to ndiswrapper in the synaptic package manager, the problem was that on my linux instillation I had no internet, so I copied the links, downloaded them on windows, put them on a USB, and then ran them in Linux. I downloaded these:

http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/m ... u5_all.deb

http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/m ... u1_all.deb

http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/m ... u5_all.deb

http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/m ... u1_all.deb

http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/u ... .6_all.deb

http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/u ... -2_all.deb

http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/u ... -2_all.deb

http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/u ... _amd64.deb


After installing these in the right order ( The ones without the dependencies first, and the ones with them last.), I finally had "Windows wireless drivers" as an option, so I opened it, but sadly, it immediately closed, no crash, no error, it just closed every time I opened it. I'm using Linux Mint 17 64bit.

Anyone have any idea about what I should do? I can't buy a new adapter.

[JeremyB]

I am not sure what is going on but what windows driver are you trying to use as I can get my BCM43231 working using https://www.dropbox.com/s/9okog539a6p5y ... ar.gz?dl=0
After being extracted you have to choose the 32 or 64 bit depending on what your OS is
I did a search of my installed files named ndis and this is what I got
ndisgtk_0.8.5-1ubuntu1_amd64.deb
ndiswrapper-common_1.59-2_all.deb
ndiswrapper-dkms_1.59-2_all.deb
ndiswrapper-utils-1.9_1.59-2_amd64.deb
From ubuntuforums, chili555 told me the common and utils are necessary, the ndisgtk just gives a graphical interface to make it simpler than using terminal to load the windows inf file

[CaptainFantasmic]

I am not sure what is going on but what windows driver are you trying to use as I can get my BCM43231 working using https://www.dropbox.com/s/9okog539a6p5y ... ar.gz?dl=0
After being extracted you have to choose the 32 or 64 bit depending on what your OS is
I did a search of my installed files named ndis and this is what I got
ndisgtk_0.8.5-1ubuntu1_amd64.deb
ndiswrapper-common_1.59-2_all.deb
ndiswrapper-dkms_1.59-2_all.deb
ndiswrapper-utils-1.9_1.59-2_amd64.deb
From ubuntuforums, chili555 told me the common and utils are necessary, the ndisgtk just gives a graphical interface to make it simpler than using terminal to load the windows inf file

It's specifically a net gear n-300, which is infamous for being finicky with linux.

I found out what was the problem, it turns out that for some reason my installation of ndiswrapper-utils and ndiswrapper-common was broken, those were the two I didn't install manually. So I did the same thing and it works fine, now I just can't get the thing to accept my wifi password, which I suppose is a whole 'nother problem worth another thread.