Are you wireless or wired?

What happened between the day it worked and the day it did not? Did you
have a crash of some type and on which side (win/lin)?

Nothing happened, no crash or anything.

This is a topic that seems to go on forever.

The only way I got past it was to use a WiFi dongle that was made to
work with Linux.

ns wrappers work, but that was just to much for me. Now my system
just works because of a $20US USB card. The major problem I have seen
while getting up to speed is the amount of stuff made for windows,
that takes a lot of time to use with other OSes. One of the worst in
my bood is WiFi adapters because of FCC involvement.

I moved to Ubuntu because I was unhappy with Vista, the price I paid
for hardware (WiFi addapter) was far less than the frustration
involved making hardware work that was designed for only windows.
Face the fact that although smaller market share that what MAC has in
the OS world, MS looks at linux as a big contender. Designing an OS
to keep out competition can be accomplished by having hardware
companies that want windows to work on there stuff to make
requirements that are proprietary or close to it.

There are many cards that work well with Linux, I show one that I use
on my blog here http://simplyrv.imnugget.com/wifi-update/ . I show
this card because I have had very good luck with it, it is not the
only card that works on Linux, just the one I use.

there are hundreds on different cards and hundreds of different
drivers needed not just one.

I did say "a" not "the" I did not imply there is only one wifi card for Linux.
There are more cards compatible with Linux then there is for Windows, but people
don't complain when they try to load Windows on a machine that was not designed
for Windows, go figure.

that just ain't so.

Many more card drivers produced for MS.

What do you mean by not designed for windows???

PCs are designed for windows.

Have you tried looking at the BIOS settings for your wireless card if it
a wireless connection.

I am going through the exact same thing. I recently went through
anUbuntu upate and a later version of the kernel was loaded and this
went into my grub startup list as the default. I began to
see "Network Disconnected" for the first time. I restarted to
booted with the earlier kernel that was still in the startup list
and the network connected fine. I am using a new Toshiba Satelite
laptop. P.S., I am still having no luck with my Atheros wireless
card that is built in.

I just did a quick search and it might be that your version of the
card isnt supported yet. What version of Atheros card do you have?

Here is my model which about the best I know:

The model is Toshiba Satelite L305-S5917. Here is an excerpt
from the specification: Integrated Wi-Fi® compliant wireless:10
o Atheros® 802.11 b/g wireless-LAN.

blog.ibeentoubuntu.com/.../...-satellite-a215.html

Check out that information.

I will explain this for next time. You usually do not need to re-install Ubuntu
to fix a problem. However, if you do, then you can usually restore it if you
copy your entire home directory to another media, such as a usb key and then
copy the files back when you are finished. To do this you need to enable show
Hidden Files in Nautilus, so that you get your settings. To do that press Ctrl-H
in Nautilus and you should see your hidden folders which all begin with a dot.
If you do this, then you keep your bookmarks and address book, etc.

I am assuming that you have a wireless connection since you would not be having
a problem if it was wired. I am not sure if it was set up and worked after the
installation and then quit or it did not work after the re-installation at all.

The Linux way is not to make it harder than the Windows way, but it is the way
it is to give the user control. Everything in Linux is about security or
control, so you will find that it does not do things the Windows way which is
the opposite. Ease of use is sacrificed. For example, it does not log you onto
the computer automatically or start your wireless network. I only point this out
to show that what you see as an inconvenience would generally shock a Linux user
if it was otherwise. Basically Linux people don't want their computer doing
things without their permission and if it does they get annoyed.

If your wireless is setup and working it will show as a connection in the
network manager, in the system tray. It scans for wireless networks and will
connect when you tell it to. Ubuntu assumes that you want roaming mode so that
you can connect to multiple networks, ie. the laptop is moved around instead of
in one place. If you want only one connection then you want managed mode. By
default the network manager icon will be in your system tray and it scans for
networks from which you can choose the one to connect to.

Linux is about control and you can make it do anything, even if it is not made
to work that way. There are ways to logon automatically or to get your internet
to connect automatically. You do this with the full knowledge that it is not the
way Linux was designed to work.

For automatic wireless connection you need to edit a file as root with a text
editor. To get a text editor to work as root you need to open a terminal and
type: sudo gedit, then it will prompt you for your password. The file that you
need to open is /etc/network/
interfaces. I have not tried this as I prefer to do it manually.

see: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/WiFiHowTo

BTW, it isn't that Linux cannot do it the Windows way. Most distros prefer to do
it the Linux way, but there are Linux distros that work just like Windows. My
eeePC came with Xandros and it connects to the internet automatically, logs you
on without a password and even loads Synaptic without a password. I hate it and
won't use it because it is so lax in its security. There is a tradeoff that must
be made. Maximum usability means lower security. Linux distros are trying to
find a balance that works for everybody and it isn't easy because Linux users
and Windows users approach things radically differently. This is probably the
greatest challenge for Linux distros, how to harmonize two different interests
and ways of doing things.

My personal opinion is that I hope Linux does not try to become a Windows clone.

In today's Ubuntu world
users do hope and expect it to work, they are not always the anoraks of
old who want it hard and command line controlled. As I said elsewhere
some versions do work at once and other do not. Yes you can get into
using Windows drivers vis ndiswrapper but its a thing windows just never
needs. In this day and age it should be possible to get a linux driver
for a modern card and install it without command line complexities in
my view .

am going through the exact same thing. I recently went through
anUbuntu upate and a later version of the kernel was loaded and this
went into my grub startup list as the default. I began to
see "Network Disconnected" for the first time. I restarted to
booted with the earlier kernel that was still in the startup list
and the network connected fine. I am using a new Toshiba Satelite
laptop. P.S., I am still having no luck with my Atheros wireless
card that is built in.

If there was a kernel update, it changes things. Hardware is detected by the
kernel and sometimes drivers are compiled for the specific kernel. The kind of
situation that you describe suggests that this is the case here.

As for the Atheros card, try installing ndiswrapper and ndisgtk from the
repositories. You will then have a graphical installer for ndiswrapper in your
menu. You will need your Windows wireless driver disk. Look for the inf file on
that disk and Ubuntu will use that driver.

In today's Ubuntu
world
users do hope and expect it to work, they are not always the anoraks of
old who want it hard and command line controlled. As I said elsewhere
some versions do work at once and other do not. Yes you can get into
using Windows drivers vis ndiswrapper but its a thing windows just never
needs. In this day and age it should be possible to get a linux driver
for a modern card and install it without command line complexities in
my view .

I agree that this is not the preferred way. It works if that is your only
choice. In other words, as long as you have your Windows disk you should be able
to get your wireless to work even if there are no Linux drivers.

Even that is not always true because Windows XP and Vista do not carry
the drivers that end in the INF tag, at least nither of mine do, and I
found that ndiswrapper will only recognise that tag.

Every Windows driver I've seen for W2K, XP, or Vista has a .inf file with it.
AFAIK, the .inf file isn't the driver - it's a file that tells the OS what
hardware the driver's for.

That is just what the Inf file does do but the ndiswrapper only asks for
inf files and rejects all others.

Seems to me that that's as it should be.............

It's not wireless.........................

If its not wireless then its an Ethernet cable to a modem or router (you
did not say).

You may just need to look at your connections settings.

Google for a tutorial on linux broadband connection descriptions.