Cannot connect to other computers with wifi

Hello. Thank you for your question.

Hello. Thank you for your question.

What wireless-hardware do you use?

AR5212 802.11abg NIC (ath0)

Ethernet: NetXtreme BCM5751M Gigabit Ethernet PCI (eth0)

Does that help?

Mr Michael, can you disable your Ethernet Card and let just your wireless card work,
Try and tell us if it works,

You connect with DHCP ? or with a static IP address ?

I am a bit new at linux so help me out here.

I tried ifdown/ifup: sudo ifdown eth0
ifdown: interface eth0 not configured

I connect with DHCP.

ok we try to use the graphical interface :
* go to System -> Administration -> Network ( then put our password )
* deseable both your Ethernet and wireless ( Uncheck them )
* Enable the wireless card ( check )

I hope that you try all this when your wifi (wireless ) PC Button is ON.

I suggest you to install also to install WIFI-Radar to detect and connect to Access point easier (it is in the Network section ( universe ) )

try it and tell us

Wow, I failed at knowing my own computer...
I had it set to "roaming mode" so I could not disable them. To do that I made each of them DHCP and then turned them off; for some reason I could not get internet at all when they were on either DHCP or static (only roaming worked). After messing with those setting for about 20 minutes I cannot even connect to a network computer with my ethernet.....

About my wifi button/light:
It does nothing, the light/switch may be off and I could still be downloading at 1.2 mbs.

What now?

Okay, when I messed with the settings more, just setting things to DHCP/static/zeroconfig I was able to connect; however, I have not since been able to replicate that.

Any ideas?

Is there a small icon in the upper right of the screen showing two small black monitors? If so, try to click on it and see if there's a list with hotspots listed. If so, click on the hotspot you want to use and set up the security configuration. Then you can use wireless.

No, I got my wifi working, well the internet at least...
When I popped my live cd in to partimage and make a backup I tried the networking.
It worked fine, I could use the internet, and connect to a computer that none of my other windows computers can't even see.

What do I do? Re-install samba?

What's the issue? Wifi is working, isn't it?

But I cannot connect to other computers on the network.

Ah. Okay. What services of the other computers do you want to use? Network shares? Shared printers? ...

Share printers mostly, also backing up to a server.
Does it really make a difference on what I intend to use the networking for?

If networking (wifi) works, there should be no problem to connect to other computers. But we need detailed information about what you want to do, what tools you use and which errors you get to help you.

Okay, the tools I use to try to connect to other computers with are:
system-config-printer.py and Nautilus.
I know the computers are on the network and nothing is wrong with them by
using wireshark and etherape.

The tools I will use when I am connected will be a synchronizing application
and the gnome printing app.

What do you want me to type into the terminal to get you your error?

I personally think something went wrong with my install because I think I
had the ability to connect to other computers with previous installs (same
computer).

Do you know the IP-addresses of the other computers? Then you could send them a ping and see if they response! (They might not response if they are run by Windows. If so, open a terminal at the Windows computers and type
ping [replace this with the ip-address of your ubuntu computer]
Then see if this works!

I pinged a windows computer and it worked fine, I lost no packets.
And when I am pinged I get very interesting results. When I was pinged at
first the order was:5ms, timeout, <1, and <1. When I did ping-ed
indefinitely the order was: <1, <1, timeout, timeout, 1003ms, then from then
on under 3ms.

When I go to My Network Places on the Windows machine, I see my computer
fine with name: "michael server (Samba, Ubuntu) (Michael)".
When I click on it, I get the error:
"\\Michael is not accessible. You might not haver permission to use this
network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to find out if
you have access permissions.

The network path was not found."

I currently do not have any files shared through smb, but instead nfs, so I
now I will try with an smb share. Nope, same result.

I went to the network under Ubuntu and I could not connect to the computer
or see it.

Any ideas as to what this is?

Did you set up the computers name and domain correctly? As far as I know is windows not able to access nfs shares. So be sure that your smb share is correctly set up.

But nevertheless: This is not a problem related to wifi anymore. Wifi seems to be working otherwise it wouldn't be possible to ping the different machines. I don't know what went wrong, I'm not a smb specialist, I'm sorry. If nobody posts a solution here, please close this question as solved and open another with a correct title and the description about the problems connecting smb shares.

Thank you for your question.

Thanks for the help.