Ubuntu 8.04 Wireless was working, but not anymore

I'm running a Dell XPS 1530 with Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 4965 AG. I installed Ubuntu 8.04 a couple months back and it has been working flawlessly. I havn't used ubuntu in the past few weeks, and when I started it up today, the wireless isn't working. In Vista, wireless works fine. The switch is turned on, but I've noticed that the blue light "Wifi" above the keyboard isn't lit in Ubuntu, only in Vista. Now after searching the web for a solution for the past hour, I havn't really gotten anywhere. I used a wired connection to run the update manager, but that didn't change anything.


This is what outputs when I enter lspci in the terminal:

lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 Memory Controller Hub (rev 0c)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 PCI Express Root Port (rev 0c)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 02)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev f2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HEM (ICH8M) LPC Interface Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) SATA AHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GeForce 8600M GT (rev a1)
03:09.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 05)
03:09.1 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 22)
03:09.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 12)
03:09.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev 12)
09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8040 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller (rev 12)
0b:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 4965 AG or AGN Network Connection (rev 61)

Any help is appreciated.

 

Okay, this'll probably be a bigger help. I entered iwconfig in the terminal and here's the output:

iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

I'm guessing wireless drivers is the issue here?

EDIT: Alright, so I downloaded the ndisgtk package and used it to install my Vista wifi driver, but to no avail. I still get "no wireless extensions".

 

Probably. If Linux detected your card properly, you'd see a line for wlan0. I would look at the output of dmesg and check for error messages related to the wireless card. For instance, I have lines like these in mine:

Code:

[   31.600423] iwl4965: Intel(R) Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN driver for Linux, 1.2.0
[   31.600426] iwl4965: Copyright(c) 2003-2007 Intel Corporation
[   31.600565] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:0c:00.0[A] -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17
[   31.600598] PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:0c:00.0 to 64
[   31.601556] iwl4965: Detected Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN

Which show that the iwl4965 modules is loaded and detects a card.

 

Do you have the ubuntu-restricted-modules package installed? Check with Synaptic.

 

You don't need any restricted drivers for the 4965agn...

 

They are OS?

 

I confirm.

 

Have you tried adding the "noapic" boot parameter?
That might do the job. You'll have to reboot before it works/can work.
Check this page for other options; link
Cheers.

 

Thanks for that link Baserk. I tried one of the solutions which is switching from ipw3945 to the iwl3945 wireless module. But that didn't work. I'll try the noapic boot parameter next.

But what really confuses me is why the wireless was working fine earlier and then suddenly stopped now. I cannot even see wireless networks in my area, and the wireless icon is off.

 

Lemur, I tried dmesg but there's nothing listed about wifi or iwl4965 or wlan0. I used Ctr+F in openoffice.org to search for it.

I tried the noapic fix, but that didn't work either. Hmmm

I was browsing my mozilla history a few weeks ago and it came to my attention that I have installed a new wireless driver in Vista because the previous one was crashing. I'm going to try getting the old ini back and we'll see how that goes.

 

was there a recent kernel upgrade to 8.04? i know a lot of times a kernel upgrade will render my wireless useless and ill have to go back to using the old kernel instead.

 

i have a solution that helped me, i used to used Ubuntu until i had this problem then i brought Vista Home Prem it worked for me!

 

Have you tried a reinstall of network-manager? the 4965, like mine is an OTB card as you probably already know. Anyway, that's what I would try first in Synaptic.

 

I'm assuming that you mistyped this. You have the Intel 4965 WiFi HW, not the 3945. So you need the iwl4965 driver installed. Unlike the 3945 HW, there's only the iwlwifi driver available for the 4965.

Good Luck..

 

Thanks for all the help everyone. I ended up just uninstalling Ubuntu, because it was under wubi anyways and I was planning to do a real installation. Now my wireless is working just fine with the real installation.