LiveCD workarounds

These workarounds will help you get past limitations of the LiveCD format in resolving a conflict between a native wireless driver and Ndiswrapper. The examples are for Broadcom, so driver names would have to be changed for other chipsets.

• Workaround 1: removing ndiswrapper to use the native driver. For Broadcom, this is often best for drivers below bcm4318.
  1. Open a terminal, and become root. Type:

     rmmod ndiswrapper
     modprobe bcm43xx

  2. Open Network Assistant, click the Wireless tab, supply your SSID (or "any" or "default")
  3. On the General tab, set to Manual, click Stop network, then Start network. Should connect after a bit of a wait, typically on eth1 interface. If not, click on the Interfaces tab, and check the box Start/restart on Apply.
  4. If not, click the radio button for Automatic (networkmanager), then Apply. Ignore the warning about rebooting. You may need to Stop and Start the network again. Then you must start the Knetworkmanager application and select the network you wish to use.
• Workaround 2: using Ndiswrapper by removing competing drivers and the native driver. For Broadcom, this is often best for bcm4318 drivers and above.
  1. Follow the steps already outlined in Ndiswrapper[LINK] to identify and remove competing Ndiswrapper drivers.
  2. Remove the native driver by opening a terminal, becoming root, and typing in sequence:

     rmmod bcm43xx
     rmmod ndiswrapper
     ndiswrapper -r bcmwl5
     modprobe ndiswrapper
     

  3. (In this example, one of the Ndiswrapper drivers for the Broadcom chipset is being removed so there is no conflict with the remaining one.) Then follow steps 2-4 in Workaround 1 above.

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