Saturday, March 30, 2013

Netgear WG311v3 on Ubuntu 12.10 64-bit

As part of my recent upgrade, I've also upgraded my sister's PC to Windows 7. That's when I learnt of Netgear's horrendous driver support. No 64-bit drivers in sight. Even the various "solutions" you can find online through Google doesn't work.

Rest assured, I'll not be looking to Netgear for further networking solutions.

But enough of that. We're here to see how to get this Wi-Fi card to work on Ubuntu 12.10 64-bit. The version of ndiswrapper in Ubuntu 12.10 has a bug so you'll need a newer version from a Launchpad PPA.

~$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:crass/ndiswrapper
~$ sudo apt-get update
~$ sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper-common ndiswrapper-dkms ndiswrapper-utils-1.9

You'll also need to get the 64-bit Windows drivers for the Wi-Fi card. If only I had tried searching with Linux in mind sooner. Then maybe I'd have been able to get the WG311v3 to work on Windows 7 64-bit. Oh well, my sister's using my LinkSys WMP54g v4.1 now so no use worrying about it. Onwards...

~$ tar zxvf wg311v3_ndis_amd64.tar.gz
~$ cd wg311v3_ndis
~$ sudo ndiswrapper -i WG311v3.INF

Check that the driver was indeed installed.

~$ ndiswrapper -l
wg311v3 : driver installed
    device (11AB:1FAA) present


Load the module manually to start using your WG311v3

~$ sudo modprobe ndiswrapper

To get the module to load on startup, add ndiswrapper to /etc/modules using your favorite editor. With the module loaded, Ubuntu's network indicator should pickup on the newly added Wi-Fi capability.

More detailed instructions are available from the Ubuntu Wiki.


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