Wireless connection woes
So I'm typing from my laptop again after about a week of having no internet connection on it for seemingly no reason.
I tried a few days ago to fix it. I don't remember what I did, but I remember reading a lot about ndiswrapper. "Well, I have no internet connection, so I can't download ndiswrapper so that I can get an internet connect". The whole situation was a catch-22.
Today I decided to try again. I gave in and downloaded it onto my USB stick and then transfered it to my laptop. Back and forth, back and forth, with a bunch of different programs and drivers, none of them working. Mainly because I ran into this error message about "kernel makefile not found" and apparently I don't have the source files or something? So I couldn't install anything, because you have to "make" to install and it just wasn't working.
I wasn't sure how I got the internet working originally. It just kind of, worked. So I put in the boot disk and did the "trial version" again. And lo and behold, it just worked! Well, after I went to the Network Manager in the system tray and selected my wireless network. I remember doing that now! It was so easy!
So then I unload the trial version and go to the installed version. And… no Network Manager in the system tray. Somewhere I read something about "KNetwork Manager" and thought "yes! Now I remember! I uninstalled that!".
And there you have it. I wasn't missing any drivers or anything like that. They were all already there. It was because stupid me uninstalled the Network Manager.
So I tried installing KNetwork Manager (after transferring it to my USB stick from my desktop, then to the laptop, then finding I needed some more packages before I could install the real package) and… nothing. I ran some commands to restart the program, I actually restarted the laptop, anything I could find. But still, nothing! There was no easy to use system tray icon. I looked around the internet, trying to find how to get it back, ran some more commands, and… you guessed it, nothing.
I loaded the boot disk "trial version" again. I really didn't much want to do that, because it takes so long to load. But I did anyway. I right clicked on the system tray icon and found out what the program was called: nm-applet-0.6.6, if I recall correctly. So I went in search for this new program… that was actually still Network Manager. Sigh.
I finally solved the problem though, somehow. I downloaded an older version of Network Manager, 6.4, and I'm not sure if I installed it or not. I don't think I did, because I got some other error, about the makefile not being found or something. But then I looked in the Network manager folder and there was one file with the actual favicon beside it. I think it was just NetworkManager. So I clicked on that… and there it was, in my system tray! It started doing the little loading animation and then… the four bars. There they were. I clicked on the icon and saw my network listed. I clicked on Firefox, not expecting anything… but it just worked! Just like always!
Then, of course, I got scared again when I restarted, because it wasn't there anymore. But adding it to System > Preferences > Sessions, so it automatically starts up, fixed that.
Now I just have to look forward to going to university and getting the Ethernet card to work…