Ndiswrapper reinstall 'misses' driver file

Havin_it

Hi,

I've used a Belkin F5D7010 Cardbus wifi card for quite a while now, but recently (due to a security flaw reported in the driver) messed around with a few different versions. Now Belkin have told me that the version they supply is safe, I've gone back to the one that came with the card (this is the same version that they offer for download, bcmwl5.sys ver. 3.30.15.0).

However, when I reinstalled the driver from the CD (ndiswrapper -i /cdrom/Driver/bcmwl5.inf) it installed the .inf file (and generated the .conf) but did not copy the .sys. I copied this into place manually, but whenever I reinstall ndiswrapper, it gets lost again.

Any idea what the problem is here? I'm sure this is the same driver (and same folder, as it appears more than once in the CD) that I used previously, so it seems as if recently something changed with ndiswrapper, or with how Gentoo implements it.

Er, haylp! I don't wanna have to manually replace bcmwl5.sys everytime I reinstall ndiswrapper!

PaulBredbury · Watchman Joined: 14 Jul 2005 Posts: 7310

Stick with ndiswrapper-1.26 - that version works.

See bug and thread.

defenderBG · l33t Joined: 20 Jun 2006 Posts: 817

Havin_it · Posted: Mon Nov 27, 2006 12:22 pm Post subject:

Thanks PaulBredbury for your info. The links were revealing ... as was this posting on the ndiswrapper forum:
http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=966

Once I've got my very old membership there reinstated, I intend to unleash some vitriol on this subject. It appears that users of older cards are being abandoned, if I interpret it right.

@defenderBG: you must have either a different rev of the card, or possibly a different locale? The latest driver rev I'm offered for F5D7010 (first rev, no number) is 2004 according to the website, though the .inf extracted from the installer is the same version and year (2003) as what I have on the CD. (I imagine it might be just the helper app that was updated.)

PaulBredbury · Watchman Joined: 14 Jul 2005 Posts: 7310

AFAICT it's just a bug, which has been fixed.

Havin_it · Posted: Mon Nov 27, 2006 3:23 pm Post subject:

I would hope and assume that's the case, but the forum post I linked above seems to suggest (referencing pgiri who is board admin and also presumably close to/involved in development) that they have been tightening rules on drivers, which might mean old (=poorly-written?) .INFs are not supported. That's my reading of it anyway, though your link above is not the only place in which "solved in svn" is mentioned. I've posted over there, just asking for clarification.