HP 4770s Ralink 3290 wireless not working on 12.10

Question

I have installed 12.10 on HP ProBook 4740s but i cant get wireless (wifi) working. After booting to Ubuntu, wireless network is by default down and even when I switch it up, it is not visible in network options in top right corner. It is also not possile to connect from terminal, because no wireless networks are found. So it seems that wireless is somehow installed but probably not properly. Do ou have any advise pls?

When I run lspci -v I get:

04:00.0 Network controller: Ralink corp. Device 3290
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 18ec
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 19
Memory at d0610000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 3
Capabilities: [50] MSI: Enable- Count=1/32 Maskable- 64bit+
Capabilities: [70] Express Endpoint, MSI 00
Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting
Capabilities: [140] Device Serial Number 00-00-fd-c3-92-23-94-68
Kernel driver in use: rt2860
Kernel modules: rt3290sta

lshw -c network:

*-network               
   description: Network controller
   product: Ralink corp.
   vendor: Ralink corp.
   physical id: 0
   bus info: pci@0000:04:00.0
   version: 00
   width: 32 bits
   clock: 33MHz
   capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list
   configuration: driver=rt2860 latency=0
   resources: irq:19 memory:d0610000-d061ffff

iwconfig:

ra0       Ralink STA  ESSID:""  Nickname:"RT3290STA"
          Mode:Auto  Frequency=2.412 GHz  Bit Rate:1 Mb/s   
          RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Link Quality=10/100  Signal level:0 dBm  Noise level:0 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

Answer 1

If you don't want to read the text below and wish your wi-fi works — then just install Ubuntu 13.04 beta or newer and copy the necessary firmware. But please don't run apt-get upgrade — there is an issue with Intel HD Graphics after upgrade.

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I have already explored a lot of tutorials, reinstalled OS more than dozen times and here is what i discovered about Ralink RT3290:

1. There is no driver avaliable in Ubuntu distros with default kernels (12.04, 12.10)
2. In Ubuntu 13.04 beta1 driver is present, but firmware is missing
3. Driver compiling is quite simple
4. ISSUE: In Ubuntu 12.10 driver causes a kernel panic
5. ISSUE: After installing driver and trying to shutdown/suspend, notebook automatically turns on/wakes up
6. Driver is avaliable in Fedora 18 beta

UPD:

Finally, Ralink RT3290 works on HP ProBook 4740s with Ubuntu 12.04 x64 with 3.6.11 kernel version. See #8 comment to bug on launchpad for getting guide about newer kernel and firmware installation.

UPD2:

Driver works with Ubuntu 12.04 x64 with 3.6.11 kernel version, but there is issues with speed and signal level, so I installed Ubuntu 12.04 x64 with manually compiled.

UPD3:

After installing the kernel 3.8.0-9 on Ubuntu 12.04 (or you can install Ubuntu 13.04 beta — it has necessary kernel version) and copying the necessary firmware, the system has stabilized and after the shutdown the notebook didn't turn on its own. But wi-fi hardware button doesn't work.