Wireless network loss problem..

[Jerry]

All linux distros tried on this Toshiba Satellite 205 have the same problem occuring:  wifi network loss at random times.

It detects and connects fine, but drops the connection at some time during use, often within a few minutes, but also after an hour or so once in a while.

I want to try a method suggested to me in another forum, but need a bit of guidance.   

I have the Realtek 8187b adapter driver I downloaded from the Toshiba site;  I would like to install it (I know how to do that) and blacklist the driver(s) Vector 6 is loading (I don't know how to do that).

I have some ideas about it from reading around, but I'm afraid to just experiment with the files in there;  I'd rather have solid instructions, if I could get them.  Help anyone?   

  - Jerry

[bigpaws]

Hi Jerry,

I did a little research and from what I am seeing you have a difficult card.

What you can do is add the device modules to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

Then try what your experiment, you can remove the modules from the blacklist
later if you wish.

Have you seen this site:

http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Download

They claim support for your wireless chipset, I did see that there are two versions
of the chipset identifiable from lspci.

If you wanted someone to look over the thing you were thinking on trying
please post a link.

HTH

Bigpaws

[Jerry]

Thanks, Bigpaws, I just had a look at that link;  it might be helpful.  I need to get this Vista hard drive swapped out to my Vector one, then I'll start off on this again.

[caitlyn]

The Realtek native drivers for Linux stink to high heaven.  You get dropped connections occasionally and limited range always.  The solution I used when I had the original Sylvania g Netbook was to use the Windows driver with ndiswrapper.  That worked very well indeed.  Generally I don't recommend ndiswrapper when another choice is available but this is a notable exception.

FWIW, the problem isn't Vector Linux or Linux in general but rather a hardware manufacturer that doesn't support Linux well at all.

[Jerry]

The Realtek native drivers for Linux stink to high heaven.  You get dropped connections occasionally and limited range always.  The solution I used when I had the original Sylvania g Netbook was to use the Windows driver with ndiswrapper.  That worked very well indeed.  Generally I don't recommend ndiswrapper when another choice is available but this is a notable exception.

FWIW, the problem isn't Vector Linux or Linux in general but rather a hardware manufacturer that doesn't support Linux well at all.

Yeah, we've gone around the block with this thing.  Right now we're pretty stoked about Vector 6 because it's just so fast and plain cool.  We will likely get the ndiswrapper thing done with the Windows driver we have here on disc (wonder if it should be XP, 98 or Vista).

But right now we've got a solid connection after running gslapt update for the first time.  We did not pay attention to what packages were updated.. that's us for you, but we've not seen any connection problems since the reboot after that update.

Vecvtorlinux was the first distribution that was installed on a machine in this house back in '97.  We've been throuhg a lot of distros and machines.. but now money is the big problem so we are hanging onto all our computers.

Thank you for input.

  - Jerry