Couple issues for an openSUSE beginner

[AD576404]

I recently scrapped my vista home edition on my laptop in favor of installing openSuSE 10.2 on it. Everything's fine, I'm still learning how to use most of its features, but it's not too difficult compared to other distros. However, I have two main problems that are absolutely killing me right now.

1) My wireless network card isn't working. Whenever I'm in YaST, under network config (or whatever it's called - my bad on forgetting ), when I click on the network card, the service does indeed pick up the card. I can run the internet just fine on a wired system, but I just don't know how to activate the wireless network.

2) My sound [card] isn't working. I've checked to see if it was muted, but indeed it wasn't. I've tried watching videos on YouTube.com, as well as several CDs, everything works, I just can't hear any sound. Once again though, under sound in YaST, it does detect it, but when I click the test sound button, nothing happens.

Any help for this openSuSE beginner will be greatly appreciated. I'm currently installing Mandriva 2007 Spring to see if I can check out the config files over there.

[44139]

right click the speaker lower right screen and select mixer, master volume default is quiet, adjust everything til it works. Wireless network-goto YAsT-Network Devices & Network Services-read help & Man(ual) pages I still don't understand all the terms' meanings. Bluetooth/wifi supported by 10.3, I think.

[bigtomrodney]

What wireless card do you have? Post the results of running

/sbin/lspci

in a terminal

[AD576404]

00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 Host Bridge (rev 10)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 PCI Bridge
00:04.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 PCI Bridge
00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB Host Controller (rev 80)
00:13.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB Host Controller (rev 80)
00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB2 Host Controller (rev 80)
00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 SMBus Controller (rev 83)
00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller ATI (rev 80)
00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SB450 HDA Audio (rev 01)
00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 PCI-ISA Bridge (rev 80)
00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 PCI-PCI Bridge (rev 80)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RS482 [Radeon Xpress 200M]
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8038 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller (rev 14)
05:09.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCIxx12 Cardbus Controller
05:09.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments PCIxx12 OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller
05:09.2 Mass storage controller: Texas Instruments 5-in-1 Multimedia Card Reader (SD/MMC/MS/MS PRO/xD)

[AD576404]

Well, I recently got my wireless usb device to work now. However, my onboard sound is still an issue.

Any help on trying to figure this out would be mighty helpful.

[AD576404]

Apparently, whenever I start up my laptop, KNetworkManager is set to just run on the wired connection at first, with no options whatsoever to run on wireless. I have to manually go into YaST-network devices-and activate my card again each and every time I start up the computer. Is there a way that it can automatically start up searching for possible signals?

[AD576404]

silly me, forgot you had to be logged in as root to use ndiswrapper.

[AD576404]

After following the directions at alsa-project.org as well as running alsaconf in the command line, it does pick up my hda-intel sb450 chip, however, after configuring it, I still can't hear any sound. I've made sure that everything isn't muted, using kmix or alsamixer, both the master and the pcm are both set to 100. I just have no clue as to why I can't get this stupid sound problem fixed.

[AD576404]

Another nasty bit, sometimes the KNetworkManager picks up my WG111v2 usb adapter, sometimes it doesn't. The drivers are installed correctly (or so I think) as well as the light on the device blinks periodically as well.

I don't get any errors whenever I modprobe ndiswrapper, the module just blinks. I've tried uninstalling the .inf driver files and reinstalling them, but when I run ndiswrapper -l, I just get installed drivers:
net111v2 driver installed, hardware (0846:6A00) present (alternate driver: conflict)

Anyway, I don't know exactly how to get it running again in the KNetworkManager. Sometimes I'm able to get it up and search for some wireless signals, but as soon as I restart the computer, the only option the manager is giving me is for a wired device connection.

[AD576404]

Blah, forget the sound, now I can't even get the usb adapter to work, I've looked at countless guides, and spent multiple days trying to get this thing to work. I've had it work before, I just don't know how to do it again. I've tried uninstalling the ndiswrapper drivers, reinstalling them, making sure ndiswrapper shows up on lsmod, etc. Now the blue light on the usb device doens't even light up whenever I try to modprobe it. Please help someone who has experience with the Netgear WG111 v2 (0846:6a00) wifi adapter.

Also, are there any other programs out there that are similar to KNetworkManager? That thing is really starting to tick me off.