Broadcom network card doesn't connect to wireless network

[Peejay]

;D I've been revitalising a Dell 1501 and had a similar problem, now SOLVED thanks to the posts here. I repeat it in case it's of use to others. My installation of LinuxLite 3.0 went great - ethernet and wifi working- until I rashly accepted the chance of installing the proprietary drivers. They knocked out everything - not even the ethernet socket was usable. I was thinking I'd have to reinstall but then tried misko's and mrmksm's solutions - getting rid of bcmw-kernel-source and installing b43-firmware-installer and everything came back after a reboot. I used Synaptic for both operations. Many thanks to everyone who has contributed - and thanks to the Forum for keeping this rather old post available.

[trinidad]

Now that all is well with your wifi, open up synaptic and locate the Debian package/s that work/s with your NIC and copy the package to a USB drive. Next time you install or upgrade or switch distros any Debian based installer will find the package from your USB and enable your wifi during the initial installation or upgrade. I've done it that way for many years with my Debian office server. It works like pre-seeding. It's easier than dealing with brcm binaries (usually rpm's anyway) from their website. Requires no terminal work.

TC