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I'm a complete and utter Ubuntu noob (and Linux in general). I installed the OS last night, and had this issue, and decided to sleep on it, woke up and have been working for 2 hours to no avail. My Wi-Fi adapter, a Netgear WNA3100 refuses to work. It shows up when I run lnusb and I see Bus 001 Device 005: ID 0846:9020 Netgear, Inc. WNA3100(v1) Wireless-N 300 [Broadcom BCM43231] so it is clearly connected to my PC. I have successfully installed the "Broadcom_bcm43xx_USB_32_64bit_v2" drivers using ndiswrapper version 1.61, but it still won't even show up anywhere.

I know the drivers are installed because it says: ndiswrapper -l bcmn43xx32 : driver installed device (0846:9020) present bcmn43xx64 : driver installed device (0846:9020) present

However, when I run lshw, the device is not there. Only: lshw -c network *-network description: Ethernet interface product: AR8161 Gigabit Ethernet vendor: Qualcom Atheros physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0 logical name: enp2s0 version: 10 serial: 78:e3:b5:c7:a5:34 capacity: 1Gbit/s width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt-fd autonegotiation configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=alx latency=0 link=no multicast=yes port=twisted pair resources: irq:35 memory:fe200000-fe23ffff ioport:d000(size=128) *-network DISABLED description: Wireless interface product: RT5390R 802.11bgn PCIe Wireless Network Adapter vendor: Ralink corp. physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:05:00.0 logical name: wlp5s0 version: 00 serial: 70:18:8b:80:a9:96 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless configuration: broadcast=yes driver=rt2800pci driverversion=4.8.0-36-generic firmware=N/A latency=0 link=no multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11 resources: irq:19 memory:fe100000-fe10ffff

That second one is a device that I disabled. It is a built in antenna that has never worked. It will show the networks but it will not connect, which is nothing new, as it doesn't work on Windows either.

I forgot to mention that I am dual-booting Ubuntu with Windows 10, and this adapter DOES work on Windows 10.

When I run iwconfig, I get this: iwconfig lo no wireless extensions. enp2s0 no wireless extensions. wlp5so IEEE 802.11 ESSID:off/any Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=0 dBm Retry short limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Power Management:off

I have been trying for such a long time, and I am quite lost on what to do next. I have scavenged Google for hours looking for an answer, following what seems like 100 guides on what to do, and am just lost. Any help would be greatly appreciated, and if you need any more information, just let me know.

However, please note that I will not be able to use internet on this Ubuntu machine. Buying another adapter is not currently an option, and the desktop is located on the other side of my home to the WiFi Router, so ethernet is also not an option. I had to type in all of those code snippets by hand, so excuse typos. Also, as a final note, it is not a range issue, because, as aforementioned, the adapter works fine and I get a solid 100mbps on Windows 10.

Any and all help would be appreciated, and I'm hoping some of you geniuses on here can help me out, and end my headache trying to wrap my head around this problem.

Thank you all,

Regards,

Johnny.

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Did you by chance Google up this? ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2264020&highlight=wna3100 – chili555 Apr 3 '17 at 19:52
    
@chili555 I had in fact attempted to follow that guide, but after following the steps, I got to "The balloon at Network Manager notified me that I had available networks and I tried to connect. After a couple of tries, I connected and even at N speeds! After about an hour, it slowed and stopped. Even though it appeared to be connected, pings to my router or to the DNS nameserver 8.8.8.8 went unanswered." And, surprise! There were no networks, and clicking the WiFi symbol simply results in: "Wi-Fi Networks device not managed" – TxtStudios Apr 3 '17 at 20:31
    
That was not the part to which I wished to draw your attention. It was this: " I don't believe this device can be made to work correctly in Ubuntu 14.04 and later. Please don't ask me to help. I've tried everything I know of and it doesn't work." – chili555 Apr 3 '17 at 20:34
    
@chili555 Oh. So it's a lost cause then? Should I just go back to Windows and accept my defeat? As mentioned in the original post, buying another adapter is not an option at this time unfortunately. – TxtStudios Apr 3 '17 at 20:35
    
While I see some things we might address, even if we embarked on a long process to fix them, ultimately, it will not work. It is not your defeat because Broadcom haven't provided Linux drivers for this otherwise good device. Several of us have tried hard to get the well known bcmn43xx64 to work and it just won't. If you are in a dual-boot situation, I'd just wait until the budget allows the purchase of a better adapter. I am sorry I have no other suggestions. – chili555 Apr 3 '17 at 20:43
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You might check out this driver at https://github.com/Elycin/linux-wna3100-install

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