What to do when our wifi device only has drivers for Windows?

I have decided to address this issue since Wi-Fi networks are becoming quite popular in study centers and in many work centers, but what to do when the Wi-Fi device of our PC only has Windows drivers?

When this situation occurs to us, Linux users should not fear, there is an application called ndiswrapper that allows us to operate the device with the Windows driver.

The way to do it using Debian 6 and its derivatives is:

1: Install the ndiswrapper

$ sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper-common ndiswrapper-utils-1.9 wireless-tools

2: Copy the files .INF y .SYS that come on the CD in a folder on your PC for example / home / tu_user

3: Install the driver

$ sudo ndiswrapper -i nombre-driver.inf

Then verify that the driver has been installed correctly

$ ndiswrapper -l

Finally install the ndiswrapper driver

$ sudo modprobe ndiswrapper

If when executing this command it gives an error saying that it does not have the ndiswrapper module (it usually happens when we have the bigmem kernel installed, it happened to me recently)

$ sudo apt-get install module-assistant

$ sudo m-a a-i ndiswrapper

With this option we will recompile the module (or driver for the kernel that we are using).

Then

$ sudo modprobe ndiswrapper

To verify that the device is working properly

$ sudo iwconfig

and something like this should appear on the screen:

lo no wireless extensions. eth0 no wireless extensions. wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID: off / any Mode: Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power = 20 dBm Retry long limit: 7 RTS thr: off Fragment thr: off Encryption key: off Power Management: on pan0 no wireless extensions.

Now that everything is fine, we make the ndiswrapper driver load when the system starts.

$ sudo ndiswrapper -m

To activate the wireless interface

$ sudo ifconfig wlan0 up

The latter must be done every time if you start the system, unless we make it automatic.

NOTE: if you have Linux X64, the drivers must also be for X64 architecture

The ndiswrapper program is designed for drivers of wireless WIFI devices that can be USB or PCI but in some other documentation it says that the same can also be done for winmodems and other hardware, I have not tried that and I leave that field open to the readers.

And now to enjoy the wireless network, but you have to install the programs to detect networks, for example the Wifi Radar, but that is another article.

Article taken from GUTL.