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drcouzelis

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From: Connecticut, USA

Registered: 2009-11-09

Posts: 4,092

Website

[GAVE UP] New Wifi card problem - no orange "Wifi on" light

For some silly reason the Intel Wifi 4965 agn mini-PCI card in my wife's laptop will not work with anything newer than Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron. Linux will not even "post". (I think that's the right word) So, I ordered an Intel Wifi 5100 agn mini-PCI card as a replacement.

When I installed it, Linux recognized it (hooray!) but will not use it. (boo!) The dmesg output says that the radio is disabled by the hardware switch. (the physical switch on the case of the laptop) Also, the orange "Wifi on" light does not light up any more.

Physically, the new card is an exact replacement for the old one. I don't think the two wires are on backwards. (they are labeled) I did not see anything in the BIOS related to Wifi. Toggling the switch off and on does not help. It is a Toshiba Satellite A215-S5837 with an AMD Athlon64 processor.

Has anyone experienced this problem?

Does anyone have a suggestion of what to try?

Thank you!

Last edited by drcouzelis (2010-08-06 13:37:14)

warenoso

Member

From: Brisbane

Registered: 2010-08-06

Posts: 76

Re: [GAVE UP] New Wifi card problem - no orange "Wifi on" light

have you installed the firmware for this wifi?.

check the wiki

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wif … 000-series

drcouzelis

Member

From: Connecticut, USA

Registered: 2009-11-09

Posts: 4,092

Website

Re: [GAVE UP] New Wifi card problem - no orange "Wifi on" light

Thank you for the suggestion. I installed the firmware, the modules were loaded correctly, and the OS detected it, but it wouldn't work.

I pretty much have given up. I returned the card mentioned above. I even bought and tried another wifi card without success. My experience has been:

Intel wifi 4965 miniPCIe: Works great, but anything past Linux kernel 2.6.27 (I think it was) will not boot with the card in the computer and with the wifi switched on.

Intel wifi 5100 miniPCIe: The wifi switch never appeared to detect it. Linux detected it and installed the drivers for it, but the "wifi on" light never turned on, and Linux couldn't use it because it didn't think it was on. I gave up and returned it to Newegg. The problem may have been related to this, but that is for miniPCI cards, and not miniPCIe.

Intel wifi 3945 miniPCIe: It is branded as a Toshiba card, and so I thought it would work in a Toshiba laptop. I bought it cheap off of Ebay. It is neither detected by the OS or the wifi switch.

I'm not sure what I'll do now. I may buy a PCMCIA card. I may just leave Hardy on it until it dies.

Last edited by drcouzelis (2010-08-06 13:36:44)

.:B:.

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2006-11-26

Posts: 5,819

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Re: [GAVE UP] New Wifi card problem - no orange "Wifi on" light

I haven IWL4965 in my laptop, and it has been working flawlessly ever since I got the laptop. WPA2, 802.11g, 802.11n, it does what it's told to. IWL4965 is mini PCI-E, and it's 802.11n already, so it should have the same amount of antennas etc. Apparently some HP laptops have BIOS locks on mini PCI(-E) cards. Don't know if Toshiba uses simiilar trickery.

However, my first laptop had a software switch, and until someone wrote a driver for Linux for it I was unable to use the wireless.

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tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: [GAVE UP] New Wifi card problem - no orange "Wifi on" light

Would rfkill help with either of the cards? I've never had to use it, but afaik it's useful for "disabled by <some>switch" issues.

The package is in the core repo.

drcouzelis

Member

From: Connecticut, USA

Registered: 2009-11-09

Posts: 4,092

Website

Re: [GAVE UP] New Wifi card problem - no orange "Wifi on" light

Would rfkill help with either of the cards? I've never had to use it, but afaik it's useful for "disabled by some switch" issues.

Thank you, I did look into that. With the original card, the "wifi on" light is  on from the time I press the laptop power button to the time I turn it off. With the other two cards, the light never turned on.

I get the impression that there is a hardware issue, either a decision Toshiba made for their laptops, or the miniPCIe port is dying. I get that feeling because I would have expected someone somewhere on the Internet to have had the same problem as me.