Problems with wireless

[Phil Meyer]

Andrew Robinson wrote:
> I had wireless working well with ndiswrapper on FC4 on my laptop. I 
> installed FC6 on other partitions, made an unsuccessful attempt to 
> configure wireless with BCM43xx. When I rebooted into FC4, wireless 
> had stopped working. I've tried unloading and reloading the module, 
> deleting and reinstalling the driver. Nothing has seemed to work. One 
> thing I find curious and I have illustrated below, I cannot change 
> parameters with iwconfig. Can someone offer insight into what I might 
> have done to screw up my wireless and what I can do to fix it? (The 
> wireless network is working because my wife's PowerBook is working fine.)

Been there done that.

Most common problem is that somehow the radio is turned off now.
Laptops with wireless have a function key, usually a different color.   
While NOT in X windows (like during boot up) press FN/F2 or whatever 
function key has the radio icon on it to enable the radio.  That key 
combo is a toggle.

It may also be done when the system is up through the kernel module for 
the device, but locations vary depending upon module, and modules 
support different things.

Here is the wiki entry for ndiswrapper with this issue:

Check if the card is powered up. If there is an LED to indicate the 
power to the card, then it is easy to see this. If there is no LED, then 
there is no way to know for sure whether the card is powered up. Some 
computers have a special key for powering up, some have a setting in 
BIOS and some others will have to be powered up by a program in Windows 
see Tips <http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/index.php/Tips> 
for more information. Until the card is powered up, ndiswrapper will not 
work. For some cards it is enough to change/add setting in 
/etc/ndiswrapper/<driver>/.conf files to 1. For example, SMC cards have 
a setting 'EnableRadio|0' which means radio is off. Change that line to 
'EnableRadio|1'. Other cards may have other settings. If DEBUG option is 
enabled, system log messages show what settings are used by the driver.