dell vostro 1000 broadcom wireless connection

Question

I have a problem with the hardware broadcom wifi.

I press the hotkey fn+f2 to activate the hardware and this will not work.

I'll look at the drivers but it appears to be installed.

How can I solve this problem? Ubuntu is all new to me so if possible, give me a clear explanation. Now do I connect the lan cable. I use the Ubuntu 11.10

lawrence@lawrence-Vostro-1000:~$ sudo lshw -class network
[sudo] password for lawrence: 
PCI (sysfs)  
  *-network               
       description: Network controller
       product: BCM4311 802.11b/g WLAN
       vendor: Broadcom Corporation
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:05:00.0
       version: 01
       width: 32 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list
       configuration: driver=b43-pci-bridge latency=0
       resources: irq:18 memory:c0200000-c0203fff
  *-network
       description: Ethernet interface
       product: BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX
       vendor: Broadcom Corporation
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:08:00.0
       logical name: eth1
       version: 02
       serial: 00:1c:23:a2:b9:a9
       size: 100Mbit/s
       capacity: 100Mbit/s
       width: 32 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm bus_master cap_list ethernet physical mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd autonegotiation
       configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=b44 driverversion=2.0 duplex=full ip=192.168.1.18 latency=64 link=yes multicast=yes port=twisted pair speed=100Mbit/s
       resources: irq:21 memory:c0300000-c0301fff
lawrence@lawrence-Vostro-1000:~$ 
lawrence@lawrence-Vostro-1000:~$ rfkill list all
0: dell-wifi: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: yes
    Hard blocked: yes

Solution

I have a Vostro 1000 with the same wireless card and I found that Ubuntu detects the card but does not install the correct drivers.

Use lspci command to display the details about hardware. It will display all of PCI connected hardware. Look the information for wireless card in the list, the match must be with this identifier [14e4:4312].

$ sudo lspci -v

05:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4311 802.11a/b/g (rev 01)
    Subsystem: Dell Wireless 1490 Dual Band WLAN Mini-Card
    Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 18
    Memory at c0200000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
    Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2
    Capabilities: [58] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit-
    Capabilities: [d0] Express Legacy Endpoint, MSI 00
    Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting
    Capabilities: [13c] Virtual Channel
    Kernel driver in use: b43-pci-bridge
    Kernel modules: ssb

$ sudo lspci -nn

05:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4311 802.11a/b/g [14e4:4312] (rev 01)

To solve the problem install the correct driver for this wireless card and remove the incorrect driver (bcmwl) which Ubuntu installed by default.

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer
$ sudo apt-get remove bcmwl-kernel-source
$ sudo reboot

And I had the wireless card working again! Because I upgraded the Ubuntu version and with the last it worked fine after installation.

Or if you prefer It can be done with Synaptic:

• Get b43-fwcutter, firmware-b43-installer
• Uninstall bcmwl-kernel-source (installed by default)

I hope it helps.

Comments

[nilsonneto]

please add to your question the output of the commands sudo lshw -class network and rfkill list all.

[Cie6ohpa]

this fixed my problem too, on Vostro 1000 with Ubuntu 16.04.1, november 2016