Ubuntu

Inspiron 8600 7.04 missing wireless icon

Asked by Navilus

    I have a Dell Inspiron 8600 laptop that I just installed Ubuntu Linux version 7.04 on. Everything went great except for my wireless. I have a built in wireless card, wired card, bluetooth and modem. The wired card (port on back) is working fine. I'm not sure what the state of operation of the wireless card is. I have no wireless icon in the upper right hand conner (the one with the little blue bars), I only have the one wired network connection icon (the one with the two little computer monitors). I have tried searching other posts but have not found a solution. I am very new to Linux but am a scientist and am very good at following instructions properly, so I can handle an intricate solution as long as I can follow detailed explicit instructions. I think the card is recognized because I can see local routers (including) mine if I click on network settings, turn off roaming mode and click on the Network Name (ESSID) radio button.
    Here is what I get is I type iwconfig into a shell...

lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

eth1 unassociated ESSID:""
          Mode:Managed Channel=0 Access Point: Not-Associated
          Bit Rate:0 kb/s Tx-Power=20 dBm Sensitivity=8/0
          Retry limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:1 Missed beacon:0

Please help! I cannot live without my wireless internet.

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Jim Hutchinson
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Best Jim Hutchinson (jphutch) said : 		#1

Hello. I'll try and help but I'm not sure I understand the problem. Is network manager not installed or not running? You mention that you can see local routers. Are you seeing those by using the icon in the notification area (near the clock) or some other method? You also mention you can click on an ESSID radio button. It sounds like network manager is running but not connecting. Does that sound correct? If so, are you allowed to connect to the ESSID in question? If you have encryption enabled, you will have to configure that in network manager. It should open a window asking for that so if not then something is certainly not correct.

Here are a couple things to try.

First open /etc/network/interfaces (sudo gedit /etc/network/interfaces) and comment out (add # in front of each line) all except

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

Then

sudo killall NetworkManager

sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

sudo NetworkManager

A reboot should accomplish the last three steps as well but shouldn't be necessary.

Hopefully you will get the network manager icon (if not make sure you have the notification area by right clicking and choosing add to panel). You can right click the icon and turn on wireless and left click to connect to an access point.

If none of this help, post back with any additional info and I'll try and help.

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Navilus (steven-furyk) said : 		#2

Thanks Jim Hutchinson, that solved my question.

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Navilus (steven-furyk) said : 		#3

Jim you are a Linux God!!! Thank you so much! I had been tring to figure this out for days and your fix worked in minutes. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

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Jim Hutchinson (jphutch) said : 		#4

Well, thanks for the complement but It's probably more dumb luck than anything. Anyway, glad I could help.