From the last couple of days my friend has been afraid to update to latest Ubuntu 11.04 release. Why? Because last time when he upgraded to Ubuntu 11.04 Beta, he lost the ability to connect to Wi-fi. After upgrade the computer didn’t even recognize that there was a Wireless card installed.
Since his itchy fingers were eager to hit the distribution upgrade from 10.10 to 11.04, he finally pulled the trigger and upgraded his AMD computer to latest Ubuntu 11.04. His intuition was correct, the upgraded Ubuntu 11.04 didn’t recognize the wireless adapter. Alas!
Just so you know, he is one of those few whose house is completely without Windows. So far, he has been really happy with Ubuntu up until 10.10. But 11.04 made him wonder. One thing he knew that it was working just fine in 10.10.
Our excellent Ubuntu Forum was there to help us out. And we did find a solution which works for both i386 and AMD processors. As we guessed, the solution lies in knowing that it was working in 10.10. So the solution is to somehow get the old driver file and remove the new one. That what is suggested in the Forum too. Here is what we did:
- Downloaded the corresponding i386 (Intel chip) and AMD drivers for Broadcom Wireless Adapter
- After download removed the old drivers using terminal with the code:
sudo apt-get remove bcmwl-kernel-source - Double clicked on the downloaded file to install it.
- Restarted the computer.
- Voila!!! That fixed the issue.
If you follow the above steps it should fix the issue for you too. If for any reason that doesn’t fix the wireless issue, then the only solution I can think of is to go back to previous stable Ubuntu 10.10.
