How do I install the driver for my Linksys AE1200 Wireless-N USB Adapter?

Solution 1:

I just bought the Linksys AE1200 USB Wireless adapter and it works fine 19-Oct-2012.

My lsusb results:

Bus 001 Device 005: ID 13b1:0039 Linksys AE1200 802.11bgn Wireless Adapter [Broadcom BCM43235]

For some reason, the Win XP driver on the installation CD would not work. None of the other broadcom chipset drivers that I attempted worked for me either.

The solution

So, a search of here and Ubuntuforums yielded this link: http://www.wikidevi.com/wiki/Linksys_AE1200 and provided this repaired version of the xp driver: http://wikidevi.com/files/Drivers/Broadcom/bcmwl_4323x.zip.

1. Download the bcmwl_4323x.zip and extract (for my example to follow, my downloads directory)
2. I opened a Terminal window:
   • cd /Downloads/bcmwl_4323x/xp/
   • :~/Downloads/bcmwl_4323x/xp$ sudo ndiswrapper -i bcmwlhigh5.inf
   • sudo modprobe ndiswrapper
3. ndiswrapper -l yielded:

bcmwlhigh5 : driver installed
device (13B1:0039) present

• Exit Terminal window, unplug LAN cable, System Restart.
• (Optional) If the USB Wireless card does not work after reboot, you may need to add ndiswrapper to your /etc/modules so that it loads ndiswrapper at startup.
  • You should be able to test if this is needed if upon boot, the LED on your wireless card is not lit. You run in terminal sudo modprobe -r ndiswrapper | sudo modprobe ndiswrapper and then the LED turns on.

Solution 2:

I'm running Ubuntu 12.04 and after searching these forums unsuccessfully, I have installed the driver for my AE1200 and it is working correctly.

Here is how I did it:

First, install ndiswrapper and be sure to install ndiswrapper-common and ndiswrapper-dkms as well.

Then, download the XP driver for the device: http://support.linksys.com/en-us/support/adapters/AE1200

Extract the zip and cd to the folder (probably xp). If you attempt to install the driver with ndiswrapper at this point, you will receive the "couldn't find section "Linksys_AE1200.files.NTamd64"" error. To resolve this, edit the bcmwlhigh5.inf file. Find the section that looks like this:

[Linksys_AE2500.files.NT]
AE2500xp.sys,,,6

Underneath it, add this:

[Linksys_AE1200.files.NTamd64]
    AE1200xp64.sys,,,6

[Linksys_AE2500.files.NTamd64]
    AE2500xp64.sys,,,6

Save and close. Then, if you've already attempted to install the driver with ndiswrapper you'll need to remove it, run:

sudo ndiswrapper -e bcmwlhigh5

Then do the install again:

sudo ndiswrapper -i bcmwlhigh5.inf

Verify with:

sudo ndiswrapper -l

Now plug in the USB device and the blue light should come on.

I could be wrong, but I think this means whoever wrote these .inf files forgot to include those lines, which I find funny.

**Update for 12.10- If you install ndiswrapper-dkms it will fail and you will start getting system errors. Follow the solution here to resolve: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ndiswrapper/+bug/1023645/comments/3

As a side note the source code he refers to is everything in the "driver" directory of the extracted tar.gz

In addition, you will also want to run:

sudo dkms remove ndiswrapper/1.57 --all

and

sudo dkms uninstall ndiswrapper/1.57