Two successful tips on HP & Wireless

[Stew Schneider]

Since wireless is such an active topic, I thought I'd share with you two 
tips which came my way.

Tip 1: One of the non-profits I administer received a brand-new HP 6510b 
dual core. Unfortunately, it was delivered with Vista Business on it. 
With a machine that badly infected, the director sent it straight to me 
for repair. My first few attempts to work with the infection were, not 
surprisingly, ineffective, so I determined to install Gutsy on it, to 
try and salvage the hardware. Surprisingly, neither the live CD, a 
thumb-drive or the alternate CD would install. After much Googling, I 
found that this is not uncommon for HP laptops and that it is necessary 
to first clear a partition with gparted.  Following that, the 
installation went very smoothly.

Tip 2: Once I had a running installation, I tried to connect with the 
wireless net. No go. I could detect the signal, but could not 
authenticate. I began to rummage through the really huge amount of 
material on wireless for Gutsy, when a thought came to me. Non-profits 
almost always work on hand-me-down equipment. What version of the 
firmware might be on the router? Turns out it was two major revisions 
behind. Updating the router's firmware instantly solved the 
authentication/encryption problem. Even though Linux still suffers from 
wireless problems, don't immediately assume that Linux is the cause of 
the problem until you have also looked at the other end of the conversation.

HTH YMMV FWIW

stew