X130e wireless problems: determining the correct driver, enabling the radio

Question

I just spent 5 days and many hours getting the wireless on my wife's x130e to work, so I thought I would share my experience in the hope that it may help somebody.
First thing: delete all of Lenovo's supplemental software that attempts to in any way manage the wireless connection. It and Windows disagree on what to do, apparently. Windows would tell me the wireless radio was on, and the Lenovo software would tell me it was off -- which it was, but because Windows thought it was on, it wouldn't turn on. So get rid of the Lenovo stuff, and just use Windows to install and manage the wireless driver. The O/S is ultimately in charge, so deal directly with it and don't try to use a middleman.
As far as choosing the right driver: Lenovo's driver matrix still leaves you with several choices of driver even after drilling down to the bottom. I finally opened the bottom of the computer (3 screws, it's easy, see online hardware manual) and looked at the wireless card. In really tiny print I eventually found "Realtek RTL8188CE." (See photo. Your card may not look like this, but you ought to find something helpful.) You can go to the Realtek site, search for that number, and eventually find a driver. I ended up using a driver from the Lenovo site, but I felt comfortable that it was the correct one when the Windows Device Manager identified the author of the driver as Realtek.
So...when I finally was satisfied I had the correct driver, and I deleted all the Levono auxilliary software, and setup the wireless card with Windows, it worked.

Answer 1

it's the same dhcp thing... shutting the daemon down should do a "dhcpcd -k" - but I have to look into it.. .as it doesn't work too well on my machine...
try "dhcpcd -k eth0" then network start... that *should* work the first time, as it releases the dhcp lease...