Sunday, May 11, 2008

Ubuntu 8.04 broken Intel ProWireless 3945 driver

It is a great disappointment that Ubuntu 8.04 has a broken driver. It is only for the first time installed, the driver is working. But after I pushed the wireless button to disable the wireless it never get up again.

So, I search for the workaround and I found it.
But the way is not good enough for me. The wireless button light is always off although the wireless is on.
You can run these command :
sudo rmmod iwl3945; sudo modprobe iwl3945

Then I use ndiswrapper to use win32 driver for Intel ProWireless 3945.
It's OK then.
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Update

Install ndiswrapper.

$ sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper-utils-1.9

Get the win32 driver. I got it from www.intel.com. Search the driver for "Intel ProWireless 3945". Unpack the package.

Run the ndiswrapper, from "System" -> "Administration" -> "Windows wireless driver".
Select the one *.INF file. For me it was the "NETw4x32.INF" .

If there is no error then it should be OK.
Have fun with your wireless.

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More update

From : http://moustafaemara.wordpress.com/2008/06/09/fixing-intel-wireless-card-3945abg-defination-in-ubuntu-804-hardy/

When i First Installed Ubuntu 8.04 i was really happy , but i got shocked when i found that my intel wireless card is not working , The system appears to see it but i cant connect nor search for networks .

After a lot of search in the ubuntu , I found that this was a formal ubuntu 8.04 Bug… Here It is

So I found a Solution Here , I tried making it more usable , Here it is , Open up your lovely Terminal

* sudo bash ( Just to make it more easy )
* modprobe -r iwl3945
* Navigate to /etc/modprobe.d command ::: cd /etc/modprobe.d
* Create file named iwl3945 command ::: touch iwl3945
* Open The File command : gedit iwl3945
* Add The Following To the File
o alias wlan0 iwl3945
o options iwl3945 disable_hw_scan=1
* Save The File and exit
* modprobe iwl3945
* sudo ifconfig wlan0 up

Now You will find networks jumping into your wireless networks list
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Update for 8.10

In my case, it still can not work properly.
The workaround I use is the last update I wrote.
I add a shortcut to run "sudo ifconfig wlan0 up".
So, after I click the wireless button to turn-off the wireless I still can not to turn-on by clicking it again. But I can turn the wireless on by running this shortcut.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you for posting this. I had exactly the same problem, and tried several different approaches with no avail (all involved that darned iwl3945). Ndiswrapper is the magic solution (it's curious I've never seen any mention of it before reading your blog). Sadly you barely mentioned how it's supposed to work, so I had to do the info-digging myself. How about writing a detailed step by step workaround? I'm sure a lot of people will find it useful.

Terima kasih dan selamat berlinux ria.

Unknown said...

OK Boss, I'll update a little bit the blog to include some steps to use ndiswrapper.

obay said...

i tried to install ndiswrapper but i got the error:
E: Couldn't find package ndiswrapper-utils-19

i also tried your next instructions, but got an error at the last step:
# sudo ifconfig wlan0 up
wlan0: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device

what could be wrong?

Unknown said...

Your last update was magic, absolute magic. Worked like a charm.