Freshly installed UM 18.04, no wifi detected

checkmate · 25 June 2018 06:33

Have an old laptop that was running 16.04 without a problem. I did a fresh minimal install of 18.04 and now there is no wifi being detected. No wifi was available during installation, so I thought it may be fixed post-installation. But now I'm running it, I can't figure out how to enable WiFi. Pressing Fn+F3 on the keyboard which is supposed to activate wireless connectivity does not work either. Help, please!

UPDATE: Tried following this: https://askubuntu.com/questions/55868/installing-broadcom-wireless-drivers

I got the WiFi icon to show up, but Wifi cannot be selected from the menu.

Kinda strange, really.

It shows the menu shows that WiFi is disabled and enabled at the same time. Check this out:

elcste · 25 June 2018 12:58

What does the Additional Drivers* screen show? (You'll need internet, like via ethernet, to get this.)

You can find it in Control Center:

You need to let it run for up to a few minutes. This is what my MacBook looks like, which does not have wi-fi after a new install (with the wi-fi driver installed):

checkmate · 25 June 2018 17:11

It shows the same Broadcom driver as yours (sans the Airport Extreme part). The difference is, the text underneath it says "This device is not working." and "Do not use the device" is selected.

So, I tried selecting the driver, selected "Apply Changes" but it has been 40 minutes and nothing has happened. Seems like it has hanged. I Closed the window and I'm back to where I started with "Do not use the device" selected.

elcste · 25 June 2018 19:44

I think that's the normal text before the driver is installed

But I don't know why applying the change would take so long. Have you used the wifi in another OS recently? I have seen a similar behavior with a failed wifi card.

checkmate · 26 June 2018 00:02

Not that I know of. It worked perfectly fine on 16.04.

So, I am trying to install again. I am able to choose the broadcom driver and activate it. But the installer shows the "Enable Wifi" option not with a check but with something like a white square before it. (Will try to get a screenshot later).

I tried Fn+F3 to enable the wifi, but no go.

checkmate · 26 June 2018 08:14

Currently using a USB wifi dongle to connect. I need the USB port for something else but here is what I found out after re-installing 18.04 again.

I have the Broadcom Driver installed but not activated.

When I do activate it, both the dongle and the internal Broadcom do not work.

So I am thinking it has to do with driver.

I uninstalled the driver with:

sudo apt-get purged bcmwl-kernel-source

Rebooted. The broadcom driver still appears in Additional Drivers but not selected and the USB wifi is working.

I am at a loss how to make the Broadcom driver work.

Should I install the firmware-b43-installer or reinstall bcmwl-kernel-source again (from Synaptic) since I have BCM43227 [1424:4358] ?

Would appreciate a step-by-step walkthrough if anyone has time.

checkmate · 26 June 2018 11:37

Finally got it to work!

Note that I have an Acer laptop with an internal Broadcom wifi adapter.

i went into modprobe.d:

cd /etc/modprobe.d

then edited blacklist.conf by blacklisting acer-wmi.

sudo nano blacklist.conf

At the bottom of the list I added the following:

blacklist acer-wmi

And voila! I can connect without any problems!