Comment 16 for bug 62452

This was also an issue on a Dell XPS M1210 laptop.

I had a couple of failed attempts at installing the latest version (v1.2.15) of the ieee80211 subsystem (as instructed by the installation notes for the ipw3945 drivers from http://ipw3945.sourceforge.net/) which ended up screwing up my kernel and affecting other modules such as my nVidia drivers (through my own clumsiness I must admit).

Through looking around it seems that whilst the ipw3945 driver module comes with the kernel and is loaded at boot time the required micro-code has been moved to the linux-required-modules-<kernel-type> package (I'm using the linux-required-modules-generic package).

So to resolve I bit the bullet and did a full re-install, then installed the linux-required-modules-generic package and the wireless device suddenly appeared in network-admin.

She's roses! :)