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I'm new to Ubuntu and I'm tearing my hair out trying to figure out how to connect to the Internet. When I try to activate the Broadcom STA wireless driver, it says:

Sorry, installation of this driver failed. 
Please have a look at the log file for details: /var/log/jockey.log.

So I tried the steps detailed here.

Problem is, I can't connect to the Internet via Ethernet cable either. I tested the cable with another laptop and it works just fine. I don't know what to do.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Linux ubuntu 3.2.0-29-generic #46-Ubuntu SMP Fri Jul 27 17:03:23 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux 

Subsystem: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd Device [144d:c0a8] 
Kernel modules: i2c-i801 
05:00.0 Network controller [280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller [14e4:4727] (rev 01) 
Subsystem: Askey Computer Corp. Device [144f7179] 
Kernel driver in use: brcmsmac
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Both ways you've tried require an active internet connection, because the driver gets downloaded first from Ubuntu servers. There is an offline installation howto, which may be a little advanced, but by no means rocket science. We could walk you through if something is unclear. – mikewhatever Sep 12 '12 at 8:33
@mikewhatever I tried entering the code that's been highlighted in the link you sent me and it said that there's no such file or directory. I opened a terminal and entered the code exactly as is. Did I miss a step? I used the windows installer instead of a cd so I can't just install bcmwl-kernel-source from there as the note says. Should I just download the .iso and make a cd? – Catherine Sep 12 '12 at 13:32
Yes, you'll need the ISO, though it's not necessary to make a cd. Just download it to a USB flash stick or the Windows partition, or somewhere you can access it from Ubuntu. Then switch to Ubuntu and extract the ISO - right click, 'Extract Here'. It will take a minute, then you'll get a folder that's easy to navigate, and should be able to install the required files by double clicking - no need for codes and commands. – mikewhatever Sep 12 '12 at 18:16
@mikewhatever I tried that and found bcmwl but when it went to the software center, it said that I have an older version of bcmwl-kernel-source and the install button was greyed out. I couldn't click on it. I'm thinking of deleting Ubuntu and installing it from a liveUSB. Would that help? I don't know how to do that though. I would use a liveCD but my netbook doesn't have an optical drive. – Catherine Sep 13 '12 at 0:17
It doesn't really matter how you install, and no, installing to a partition instead of with wubi wouldn't help. Which ISO file have you downloaded? It must be the same version you have installed, and at least two ISOs, 12.04 and 12.04.1, are now available. To verify whether you have 12.04 or 12.04.1, run lsb_release -a, the output of uname -a should also be useful, as it would show the kernel version. If possible, could you also copy/paste the output of the lspci -nnk | grep -iA2 net command to identify the hardware. – mikewhatever Sep 13 '12 at 2:17
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