Dell Inspiron 1525 - Wireless not working

[nutt318]

Hello,

Anyways I've been playing with BT4 for a day or so now and have not had any luck getting the wlan0 to work. Basically my wireless card doesn't even show up in BT4. I have looked through most of the 'beginner guides' and most are talking about how to start/enable the wireless device. Mine isn't there, however my wired one is.

My laptop is the post title - Dell Inspiron 1525, I know my wifi works, I dual boot between OSX and Win7 and it works great. Also it doesn't appear that anyone else has tried it on the same model.

So, if anyone has any ideas or suggestions on how to install drivers or something that would get BT4 to recognize my wireless card that would be awesome.


Thanks,
Jake

[calnorak]

Something that would help is lspci (thats l like lima), If its the mini pci-express card most laptops utilize it will be there. Once we know what it is we can have a better idea if its supported and how much.

[evok1]

Hi,

Did you install BT4 on your hard drive or do you use vmware?

Evok

[nutt318]

I am running it off the bootable CD. I am thinking about creating a bootable thumb-drive and running it from there.

After more googling today, I have found that Ubuntu users have the same problem with this particular wifi card. I have read this article here - HOWTO: Dell Inspiron E1505 Wireless (Broadcom 1390 WLAN) - Ubuntu Forums , I have a 1395 so it should work.

Only bad thing is I need a way to get an internet connection on my onboard wired NIC and somehow save the new driver file.

Does anyone have a better suggestion? I'm guessing a bootable thumb-drive is the way to go. This way I can download this updated driver file and save it to the thumb-drive then use it in BT4. Only problem is will I have to do this every time I boot to the thumb-drive?

Anyways, any suggestions are a plus. I'll keep posting the more I figure out.

-Jake

calnorak, what is lpci or lima? Haven't heard of that before.

Well I installed BT4 on my thumb-drive use the 'Install BackTrack Live to USB (Unetbootin)' method. Everything worked fine and it was a lot faster. I tried the user guide from my previous post on setting up a new driver but when I reboot it doesnt save any settings ... is there a way for furture use that I can save settings/documents to the bootable version?

Anyways, I'll keep posting more info I find. Again, keep posting any suggestions.

Thanks,
Jake

[evok1]

I'm guessing a bootable thumb-drive is the way to go. This way I can download this updated driver file and save it to the thumb-drive then use it in BT4. Only problem is will I have to do this every time I boot to the thumb-drive?

I don't think it will change simething, but you can try it.

Did you start the networking in BT4? in a shell > /etc/init.d/networking start

You can also try this

Evok

[nutt318]

Well I just installed an additional wifi card into my dell, I never would have guessed that I can have 2 wifi cards working. So now I've got my original dell 1395 wifi card working on my dual boot, osx and 7. So far OSX still works on the 1395 and doesnt even see the additional wifi card I installed, its a Intel wm3945abg.

So now I can boot into BT4, use the 2nd card (intel wm3945) and go back to OSX or 7 and use the default dell 1395.

Also I did a Persistent USB drive install and its working great, I can now save files and apply updates and wont loose them after a reboot.

Thanks for the help!
Jake

[wd40bomber7]

Did you ever get the original wireless card working in BT4? I have a dell inspiron 1525 and for the life of me I can not get it to recognize the wireless card.
lspci says: 0b:00.0 Network Controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4328 802.11a/b/g/n (rev 03)
ifconfig does not list anything besides lo and eth0, I installed the latest drivers from
Broadcom.com - 802.11 Linux STA driver
In the readme it lists my card specifically as one of the supported cards. Note that I have done all of this on a persistant usb drive, not a hard drive install. I plan to test on a harddrive install soon.

Anyone have any suggestions? Thank you...