Ubuntu 12.04 and BCM4312 LP-PHY Not Connecting to Wireless

After nearly a year of touching nothing but Apple Macs, we experienced a sudden computer shortage in the office and I had to breathe life into an old Compaq Presario CQ40.

The old machine was heavily bogged down by Windows Vista, so I downloaded Ubuntu 12.04 and was up and running in no time… until I couldn’t connect to the WiFi.

It’s been a while since I had to troubleshoot Ubuntu, but it was as easy as ever.  I simply Googled Ubuntu 12.04 can’t connect to WiFi, and in the second link I found this article about a similar problem in Ubuntu 11.04.

I pretty much followed the instruction from there, but hit a snag as they give the instructions for a Broadcom 4311 chip, which identifies itself as [14e4:4312] when you run this command and scroll back to find the information about your Network controller.

  • $sudo lspci -v

Mine identified itself as Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01).

The main difference there being that BCM4312 and the LP-PHY identifier.

Although in the comments somebody said they tried the instruction above on BCM4312 and it worked for them, I didn’t have the same luck.

The answer presented itself right there in the terminal after following those instructions, so here’s what helped me get Ubuntu 12.04 using Broadcom BCM4312 LP-PHY connected to the office wireless Internet of our office WiFi:

  • $sudo apt-get update
  • $sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-lpphy-installer
  • $sudo apt-get remove bcmwl-kernel-source
  • $sudo reboot

And that’s how you get Ubuntu 12.04 with a BCM4312 LP-PHY Wireless Chip to connect to WiFi.

Published by Yaku

Yaku is a brewer, baker, and semi-retired trouble maker (semi-retired from trouble-making that is). Although he believes anything is possible, he is nevertheless frequently stupefied by his world and the people in it.

9 thoughts on “Ubuntu 12.04 and BCM4312 LP-PHY Not Connecting to Wireless

  1. Thank you my dear, you are a life saver, I tried many things and never got it to work, and hay BINGO, I did what you wrote here, working very nice, no problem, it took me a week to find you.
    Thanks again
    Waheed

  2. Worked like a charm here, Ubuntu 12.10, Dell laptop.

    I think the bcmwl-kernel-source package is the source of all the problems.

  3. Hi,

    Had the same problem, same solution got it working but still can't get bluetooth (supported by same hardware interface) working. Anyone can please report if the bluetooth is working with these drivers? Thanks!!

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