Wireless (and graphic card) not working in Ubuntu 64-bit on Dell 1420 lappy...help!

My Inspiron 1420 originally ran Vista Home Premium 32-bit. To get a taste of 64-bit computing and for the curiosity of trying a Linux system for the first time, I installed Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 this morning making a dual-boot, and things went fine--up until a notification says that my Nvidia drivers need enabling and upgrading. Mind you, I tried enabling the Nvidia drivers, but that didn't work, and it was asking for upgrade--I'm still trying to figure out what's going funny with it.

I tried to connect via my dorm's wireless to find help and upgrades--and no joy; Network Manager can't pick up a thing. I looked at my Wi-Fi indicator light, and it wasn't on, which is strange because my wireless switch is permanently on, so I surmise that the wireless card isn't working with the OS (?).

Oookaay. So anyway I try to enable the wireless, and I couldn't figure out where the option is, dangit. Dunno if it's a case of 64-bit not recognising 32-bit drivers...I may be extremely dense, and you can all troll me for my newbie stupidity, but please help me out here guys. What's gone wrong with the thing, and how do I get it to work? Being new to installing OSes and Linux I have no idea where to start troubleshooting.

*System specs as below in signature, with new addition of Ubuntu Hardy Heron 64-bit. Network adapters are Broadcom NetLink Fast Ethernet, driver version 10.10.0.0, and using Dell Wireless 1505 Draft 802.11n WLAN Mini-card with a Broadcom driver 4.170.25.17. Checks in Vista tell me that the driver software is up to date (in Vista anyway) and that everything else is working fine.*

 

I don't have good news for you. I've spent most of the last 2 days trying to get my Studio 1535 Dell with a broadcom wireless card up and running, to no avail. I have tried everything I could find on the 'net about this, including:

using included native drivers
using b43-fwcutter
using ndiswrapper
installing driver available from broadcom

I have tried both 32- and 64-bit versions of Hardy Ubuntu, on two different wireless networks. The card runs fine in Vista and XP/XP64.

You'll find lots of info if you just Google "broadcom ubuntu hardy" - but I'm here to tell you none of it has worked for me. I'm pretty much giving up on Ubuntu at this point. I've wasted too much time and effort.

 

If you're using ndiswrapper, use the driver from Dell, NOT the one from Broadcom. Broadcom cards suck, and even more so they have slightly different drivers on different machines, even for the same stupid chip.

Aritheanie, as for your issues... was the card on last time you booted into Vista? That has caused problems in the past for me and other people. And what you probably have to do is plug your notebook into a wired network connection temporarily... it needs to download some software to get your network card and graphics card working, since I believe they are both restricted drivers. Just plug it in with a wire to a network jack, and run through the restricted driver thing again.

 

Okay, I'm a moron. There's a switch at the back left side of my new laptop that turns the wireless on and off. It was off, since I pulled it out of the box, apparently. I switched that on and the built-in, precompiled Broadcom driver worked for me.

Aritheanie - this link is all it took for me to get up and running, once I got past the moron issue. Note you do need to do a full update of your 8.04 system before the Broadcom STA option shows up in Hardware. Presumably you have a working hardwire connection you can use to do this.

ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=880218

 

theres an extremely easy solution to this problem.

Download and install Ubuntu 8.10 INTREPID IBEX.

Trust me, the wireless drivers will load on first boot, then all you have to do is go to the Restricted Drivers Program in the Admin menu.

Simple.

 

Well I've given up trying to work with Ubuntu as I have no wired connection here at uni. Anything else will have to wait till I get back home, unfortunately. I've been trying every single distro I could think of that suits my needs--Zenwalk, Mint, SUSE, SimplyMEPIS, PCLOS, and none of them recognise the *&^*^% driver out of the box while in Live mode which I use to test, which is dumb. Gahh. Th *buntu and *buntu-based systems give me something about "Network" and UNCLAIMED. What's that and what do I do about it? If you guys need to see results from lshw or lspci let me know and I'll put it up.

Yardboy and Pitabred--thanks for the advice, though not really that helpful right now unfortunately as I have no wired connection, and since they're all using bloody Broadcom drivers I worry that the Ethernet doesn't work either. Actually in Ubuntu I have no connection whatsoever, as iwconfig shows no Ethernet and no WLAN. Crap. Nothing gets recognised under any system apparently. Pretty wonderful.

Edited to add: whaddaya mean my WLAN switch wasn't on? The thing's always on, mates--the Internet and I are permanently joined at the hip 24-7-365. LOL. Didn't stop it from looking like it wasn't on with the absence of pretty blue LEDs in all the Linux systems I've tried so far though.

Will test hypdotspec's suggestion. I just finished downloading and burning the ISO for Intrepid Ibex. Now to see if 5th time's the charm.