Can't find wireless connection in Windows 7 OR Linux.?

Question

Hi! I'm dual-booting Windows 7 and Backtrack 5, and I can't get a wireless connection in either of them. In Windows, it says that no connections are available, and I know there are at least a dozen in my area. In Backtrack when I open up wicd, I get a similar error. I've tried many, MANY things. I have an Intel Centrino Wireless-N 6150 wifi card. I don't think the problem is cause by Backtrack, because I could get wireless access for a few days before the problems started.... Any help?

Answer 1

For Windows 7, check in "Device Manager" under "Network Adaptors" to see if your wifi-card is there, and if it is, check to make sure it is enabled. Sometimes drivers get disabled after a fresh install. If that doesn't apply to you, it's unlikely, but you might have a bad wireless nic. If so, just buy a usb adaptor.



As for Backtrack 5, depending on if you have the KDE or Gnome versions, there's a couple of different options. Make sure you run wicd as a root user, or if you run it as a normal user, make sure the normal user has been added to the "adm" user group. This can be done via, "adduser [username] adm" via terminal as root. If you are running wicd as root, and you are not seeing wireless networks, you either have a bad driver (which would apply to win7 as well), or a bad card. You can also try network-manager (similar to wicd, except its a Gnome app, it will also work in KDE), by typing into terminal as either root, or under sudo, "apt-get install network-manager" I can't remember the install steps after that, but it will get you started.



If none of that works, I really think it would be physical issues such as a bad/outdated driver, or a bad wifi card.

Answer 2

Pinging localhost will not tell you anything about network hardware, because that is a loopback interface that does not go to or through any nic. So that ping would work even if you had no network hardware on your computer (unless networking or response to ping was totally disabled).



How far are you from "your" wireless router and is that working? If you are trying to mooch off of someone else, maybe they shut down and went away for the weekend (or vacation for a week).

Answer 3

Something like this happened to me. A virus had corrupted and embedded itself in the network cards tcp/ip stack and my network card could not renew its ip address or start dns. I just simply downloaded the latest combofix onto a flash drive and ran it in safe mode on the infected computer. You can also go to properties of your wireless device and remove the tcp/ip protocol and then reinstall it.