How to solve: No Wireless Network Detected in Ubuntu 11.10

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One of the most common problem one faces after a fresh install of Ubuntu is the loss of Wireless Network. And believe me that is the biggest pain for a normal user. The problem double-folds if the wireless adapter is broadcom (do not know what is your wireless adapter? click here). Some of the general problems are showing no wireless adapter, showing wireless adapter but detecting no wireless networks etc. [Read more…]

How to install restricted wireless drivers in Ubuntu without wired network

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If you are having trouble with your wireless network adapter then you might get some help from these posts here and here.

To install the restricted drivers (broadcom wireless drivers) in the ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal and Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric without a wired Internet connection follow the instructions below: [Read more…]

How to solve: Dell AC Power Adapter Type Not Recognized

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My AC power adapter charger for Dell Inspiron N4010 went into smokes two days back and I went to shop for a good (read cheap) alternate of it. After fiddling around a bit I settled for a “itworks” Universal Power Adapter (for 60 Euro sigh!). It comes with 12 plugs to use it with all the major laptop manufacturers and two type of power cords one for each North America and Europe. The below photograph is a not of my universal power adapter 😛

I went back and happily plugged the adapter into my laptop and switched it on. To my dismay, at boot time, it gave a warning message something like “AC Power Adapter type not recognized”. When I chose to ignore the warning and booted into the operating system, I saw the strange things with the battery icon. Despite of the adapter plugged in it was showing only 5% of battery left.

It took me some minutes to recognize my mistake, a blooper actually. This happens when you think you are too smart to ignore small details and turns out to be a fool.

As I said the Universal Power Adapter had a number of plugs for different manufacturers and it was numbered accordingly. In most foolish way I was using a plug meant for HP which somehow got fit into the socket. When I saw that and change it to the correct one the problem was solved.

Are you using the correct plug? Check it.

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How to solve: No wireless network in Ubuntu 11.04 : Centrino Wireless-N 1000

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Official Ubuntu circle with wordmark. Replace ...
Image via Wikipedia

Wireless and Ubuntu never go hand in hand. No version of Ubuntu has worked out of box for all wireless hardware. This post is meant for people who has Centrino Wireless-N 1000 wireless adapter. If you do not know what is the make of your hardware, follow this link: Know your Network Adapter.

If your network Adapter is of Broadcom BCM 43XX series, you may want to follow this link: Wireless problem with Broadcom in Ubuntu 11.04

Problem Detection:

Now if you are still here I assume that you have a Centrino Wireless adapter from Intel. Run the following command:

 sudo rfkill list 
1: phy0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: yes
    Hard blocked: no
2: acer-wireless: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: yes
    Hard blocked: no

Instead of acer-wireless, there may be other result as well. If it says Soft blocked: YES that means the wireless is turned off in software. Follow these solutions.

Solution 1:

If you are connected to Ethernet (Wired Network) disconnect it and type this command:

sudo rfkill unblock all 
sudo rfkill list all

Solution 2: 

If the above command does not solve the problem. Try with this command (replace the acer with your result in previous command output ):

sudo rmmod -f acer-wmi 
sudo rfkill unblock all 
sudo rfkill list all

Make the changes permanent:

If the above mentioned solution worked then you might want to make it permanent by amending a few lines in the configuration file so that you don’t need to type these commands again and again on each boot. Type the following commands (again replacing “acer”): 

sudo su 
echo "blacklist acer-wmi" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf 
exit

Hopefully this works for you all! Questions, suggestions and feedbacks are welcomed. If you liked the post then please acknowledge it by liking/voting/commenting on the post. Enjoy :)

Sources: Ubuntu Forums

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How to solve: No wireless networks in Ubuntu 12.04, 11.10 and 11.04

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Problem:

Recently I installed Ubuntu 11.04 (wireless was working while installing) on my Dell Inspiron N4010 which uses Broadcom Wireless Adapter (How to know which network adapter you are using?). Wireless networks were even available when I used it for the first time after installing. Then there were message from Ubuntu that restricted drivers are available for Broadcom STA (BCM4311) (why did it ask me to download the wireless drivers when wireless was working on the first hand..??). Any ways, I said, why not? I clicked on the activate button. It installed the driver and asked me to restart the computer. I restarted it and there you go. Wireless is on. But it detects no networks. I know there are wireless networks but Ubuntu is not detecting any wireless networks.

Reason:

The reason what I think is some compatibility issues (it’s probably a bug in 11.04) with this version of Ubuntu and the restricted driver because same driver was working quite well in previous versions of Ubuntu.

Solution:

Here is what you need to do. Use other Broadcom drivers. Download these drivers (from Windows or through wired network or a friend’s computer or from wherever you are reading this article :) ).

For 32 bit: http://ie.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/restricted/b/bcmwl/bcmwl-kernel-source_5.+bdcom-0ubuntu5_i386.deb

For 64 bit: http://ie.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/restricted/b/bcmwl/bcmwl-kernel-source_5.+bdcom-0ubuntu5_amd64.deb

(Don’t know which Ubuntu you are using? Click here: Check you Ubuntu architecture)

Now remove the previous drivers in Ubuntu 11.04 by using: sudo apt-get remove bcmwl-kernel-source

Now install the appropriate driver (you have downloaded from the above links). Restart your computer. If restarting doesn’t work try shut down and then start it (strange…but works). Enjoy :)

Alternate Solution 1:

If you could connect through a wired network, this solution might work for you. (If not then check here). The problem is with STA drivers so better to deactivate/uninstall it.

Alternate Solution 2:

People who cannot solve the problem with the above specified method may want to try this one. Here you go:

  • open the ‘Synaptic Package Manager‘ (if you are using Ubuntu 11.10 then install it first from the software cemter) and search for ‘bcm’
  • uninstall the ‘bcm-kernel-source‘ package
  • make sure that the ‘firmware-b43-installer‘ and the ‘b43-fwcutter‘ packages are installed

  • type into terminal:

    cat /etc/modprobe.d/* | egrep '8180|acx|at76|ath|b43|bcm|CX|eth|ipw|irmware|isl|lbtf|orinoco|ndiswrapper|NPE|p54|prism|rtl|rt2|rt3|rt6|rt7|witch|wl'

    (you may want to copy this till the end if it is not visible properly) and see if the term ‘blacklist bcm43xx‘ is there

  • if it is, then type cd /etc/modprobe.d/ and then sudo gedit blacklist.conf put a # in front of the line: blacklist bcm43xx then save the file (I was getting error messages in the terminal about not being able to save, but it actually did save properly).
  • reboot
Hopefully this works for you all!
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Sources: ubuntuforums, askubuntu