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I tried to install 12.04, 13.04, and now 13.10 on the machine and followed all the instructions that made sense that I could find and still have not gotten wifi to work.

It keeps it hard blocked for some reason, not sure why and not sure anyone out there either has figured it out because I would have found it on Google.

  • When I boot from the formatted USB drive, I have WiFi and everything working, why doesn't work after the USB drive is removed?

  • What driver is the USB/wubi or whatever using so that I can install it and have things working? I could have used wubi and installed Ubuntu like that, but I want to make this machine a fully dedicated Ubuntu machine.

  • The laptop is a Lenovo S205 in case anyone can help. I really would like to use 12.04 or higher, i don't want to downgrade to an older version of Ubuntu if at all possible.

Jorge Castro
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Hatem Jaber
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3 Answers3

1

Do you know what wireless device you are using? - run lspci (or lsusb) in terminal or something to find out.

Some drivers that are automatically installed don't work very well - check the driver here. (you should be able to find it in the lspci (or lsusb) output - run it with the -vvv option (lspci -vvv) against the device.

For instance my lspci output for my wireless is:

02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11bgn Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01) ...

...Kernel driver in use: bcma-pci-bridge

Also, have a look at programs like rfkill, which can be used to block and unblock wifi. Also, some Lenovo models have a switch to turn on and off the wifi. This is a low-profile switch and is probably located near the front. Mine (for a different Lenovo model) is located underneath front near the touchpad.

Also look at this: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1850027

Wilf
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For some strange reason I had to change the boot order in BIOS to boot from network first in order to get the wifi working on my Lenovo S205.

user142
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WiFi is anything but simple. Important, yes, but not simple.

The S205 could have many different PCI Express WiFi minicards... some which may not have Linux drivers, as confirmed by this post http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/IdeaPad-S-series-Netbooks/WIFI-connection-not-found-on-new-s205/td-p/532659 .

The S205 is consumer, not professional, equipment, after all, and there's historically more trouble with consumer gear. I had the same problem with my SL400 Thinkpad (also consumer, since replaced with business grade gear) so replaced the card with one known to work well with Ubuntu; problem solved.

You might wish to review the hardware manual at http://download.lenovo.com/UserFiles/UserGuide/en/User's%20guides%20and%20manuals/S205/Lenovo%20IdeaPad%20S205%20Hardware%20Maintenance%20Manual.pdf which shows how to replace the card.

However, here's a thread showing where to find drivers for the RAlink WiFi card you might have: http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/IdeaPad-S-series-Netbooks/Ideapad-S205-Wireless-N/td-p/453153

K7AAY
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