Unable to connect to wifi on a Dell Inspiron e1505

Question

I am using a Dell Inspiron e1505 laptop. I can connect with a wired connection but it doesn't pick up the wifi or I cant enable it at all. It's rather frustrating. Any help?

Answer 1

Have you tried System Settings -> Additional Drivers?

Try that but, I've noticed an odd bug when installing Ubuntu in PC's Using Broadcom, before Install you must check if Wifi works normally, if is not that way you should check System Settings -> Additional Drivers and enable them before proceeding the Installation. If you not do this, when you try to install the additional drivers after ubuntu installation they are never detected properly.

Answer 2

Check Network Manager - does it have an Enable Wireless entry? If so, ensure that it's checked. If not, then the driver for your wireless device probably hasn't been loaded. Do lspci -k -vv | grep -A11 -i wlan (adjust the -A11 to ensure you see all the lines following wlan, e.g. -A12, -A25), and find out what your system knows about your wireless interface.

Answer 3

I faced the same problem. I found the solution and I put it in this website :) Please try to do the steps in this link step-by-step. Finally, the solution for slow wireless (WiFi) on both Ubuntu 11.10 & 12.04

Answer 4

This is the actual steps to follow, some times wifi card may block.

Check if the wifi card is blocked (Terminal)

rfkill list wlan     (for wifi)

OR

rfkill list all             (for wifi and bluetooth)

UNBLOCK:

rfkill unblock wlan     (for wifi)

OR

rfkill unblock all             (for wifi and bluetooth)

Restart the network:

sudo service network-manager restart

I got the same problem to my laptop the above step does't work for me unfortunately this worked for me try this if the above does't work for you.

Actually I followed 2 step to enable wireless in my PC

Step 1 : Removed the bcmwl-kernel-source package

sudo apt-get remove bcmwl-kernel-source

Step 2 : Installed the firmware-b43-installer package.

sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer

And then rebooted my PC .

Finally got my work done. :)