Wireless card Realtek RTL8723AE-BT is not recognized

Solution 1:

Realtek is making the official Linux driver available unofficially (via Dropbox)

Support for the RTL8273AE-BT has been added by Realtek in the 92-series driver, version 0006.0514.2012. For unknown reasons, neither the Windows nor Linux drivers are available on their website (yet). But Realtek tech support has been providing a Dropbox link with the source code/firmware tarball which numerous users have reported as working.

Where do I get it? Is it safe?

The driver can be downloaded via this Dropbox link.
I can confirm that this file is what it claims to be, with this content listing, provided it has the following MD5 or SHA1 hashes: (which you can verify with md5sum or sha1sum)
```
MD5: fd10e9a347c6447f649324d6bdab53de
SHA1: 1ccd6ae73878d8bf65bd7c0384e333b121606230
```

How do I build and install the driver on Ubuntu?

Open a terminal with Ctrl+Alt+T.

You'll need to install these packages first to build the driver:

sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-generic linux-headers-`uname -r`

Paste the below line to download and extract the driver archive in one single step:

wget -O- http://dl.dropbox.com/u/57056576/DRIVERS/REALTEK/rtl_92ce_92se_92de_8723ae_linux_mac80211_0006.0514.2012.tar.gz | tar -xz

Change to the extracted driver's directory, build and install the driver:

cd rtl_92ce_92se_92de_8723ae_linux_mac80211_0006.0514.2012
make
sudo make install

Test the driver by loading it (this is a one-time step; after you reboot once, the driver should automatically load on every boot):
```
sudo modprobe rtl8723e
```

Solution 2:

Commenting out/removing the IEEE80211_HW_BEACON_FILTER (line 320 in base.c) makes it possible to compile when using the 3.4 kernel. So far I haven't experienced any problems. The card seems to work as it did before, although it might be less power-efficient. I can't guarantee it won't cause any problems, but it's better than nothing.

Well, then here's some new feedback for ya: I did all of the above and got the same compile error and fixed it with your suggestion. Then the driver worked ONCE. After rebooting, no longer it could open any wireless connections. Tried booting into windows 7 and still, no longer it can detect any wireless connections.

I am now convinced this procedure has bricked my wlan adapter - windows still recognizes the device but there is some problem because it no longer senses any wireless connections. I have to use an external linksys adapter because my onboard realtek is gone :/

<<>> Disregard above comment because I was pissed when I wrote that.

UPDATE: I found out that somehow that driver has set my WLAN module's 'Roaming Sensitivity' setting to 'Low', which was causing it to not be able to detect any wireless signal whatsoever. In Windows 7, I went to device manager and changed that setting to 'High' and voilá - it went back alive! phew...

In any case, be aware that this sort of thing might happen to you if you're not careful when following advice from the interwebs. I will think twice before booting into my ubuntu partition again...