Ubuntu – How to get a Broadcom BCM4313 wireless card working

12.04broadcomwireless

I upgraded Ubuntu from 11.10 to 12.04, until which wireless was working just fine. After the upgrade and reboot, wireless is not even being detected (When I click the network manager icon in the top panel, it does not show the wireless networks. Neither the Enable wireless option is there). But my laptop's LED indicator shows wireless is on.

This is a Dell Vostro 3450 laptop with:

Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller (rev 01)** (from lspci). Is any other info needed?

How do I get Wifi working?

Best Answer

I have a vostro myself. But a BCM43224. Maybe the solution does not fit for you. However this helped me out. Somehow the "sta" driver stopped working correctly. You need to install another driver. Before installing remove the following packages

sudo apt-get purge bcmwl-kernel-source broadcom-sta-common broadcom-sta-source

(removing these was essential for me. Without I had massive connection problems with the b43 driver)

Afterwards install the following packages

sudo apt-get install b43-fwcutter firmware-b43-installer
sudo echo b43 >> /etc/modules

then reboot and check if your card is found. (You can try by hand without rebooting. If you currently use the wl driver execute

sudo modprobe -r wl
sudo modprobe b43

)

More info, what helped me can be found here:

http://www.linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43

http://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/WLAN/Broadcom_bcm43xx

Alternatively try the driver described here: http://www.linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/brcm80211 this one should support your chip.

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