Hello,
Alright before I begin I should let everyone know I am a complete noob with linux.
Now I recently bought a toshiba satelite A215-S7422
WITH vista it proceeded to catastrophicly crash and I lost all my information on my hd.
the restore disks do not work so I decided to install linux.
up to this point mandriva is awesome but I can't figure out how to get the damn wireless card working!
I searched some other forums and found I should type "lspci" at the prompt.
this is what I got...
00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS690 Host Bridge
00:01.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS690 PCI to PCI Bridge (Internal gfx)
00:04.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc Unknown device 7914
00:05.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc Unknown device 7915
00:06.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS690 PCI to PCI Bridge (PCI Express Port 2)
00:12.0 SATA controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 Non-Raid-5 SATA
00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI0)
00:13.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI1)
00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI2)
00:13.3 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI3)
00:13.4 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI4)
00:13.5 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB Controller (EHCI)
00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 SMBus Controller (rev 14)
00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 IDE
00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia
00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 PCI to LPC Bridge
00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 PCI to PCI Bridge
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 RS690M [Radeon X1200 Series]
08:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 01)
14:06.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 05)
14:06.1 Generic system peripheral [0805]: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 22)
14:06.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C843 MMC Host Controller (rev 12)
14:06.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 12)
14:06.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev 12)
I don't see anythin except the ethernet card listed.

When I go into the mandriva linux control center And go to the "BROWSE AND CONFIGURE HARDWARE" tab it is listed at the very bottom of the list under the tab "UNKOWN/OTHERS" as the "RTL8187B-WLAN-ADAPTER"
The information that comes up when I click on that is...
Identification
Vendor: ‎Manufacturer_Realtek

Description: ‎RTL8187B_WLAN_Adapter

Media class: ‎

Connection
Bus: ‎USB

Bus PCI #: ‎6

PCI device #: ‎3

Vendor ID: ‎0x0bda

Device ID: ‎0x8197

Sub vendor ID: ‎0x0000

Sub device ID: ‎0x0000

Misc
Module: ‎unknown

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!!
Thanks

Maybe you should take a look at http://briancantin.blogspot.com/2007...-on-linux.html
If that doesn't work you can try NDISwrapper http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net . I haven't used it my self, it wasn't necessary on my pc, but it should get your realtek working..

Alright here is the next problem.
NO sound from my sound card!
I posted the lspci info above in my last post.
please help!!!
I checked all the volume settings and everything.
Not sure what is wrong...

So your realtek worked??.. and if yes which way?? pls tell so if someone else has the same problem can find a solution.
About the sound.. the first thing that comes on my mind is that you should configure alsa.. so open a terminal and type

then type your root password

then use your arrows to navigate and press the m key on your keyboard to unmute the channels you need..

press escape when you finish and type on the terminal

hope that helps..

I tried that but all the channels were un-muted and the volume's were all turned up.
Not sure what else to try I've gone over pretty much everything I have seen on other posts...
If anyone Knows what to do please advise!!!

no my realtek w-lan card is still not functioning but the sound card is a bigger problem for me.
I am satisfied for the moment with using my ethernet card to access the internet.

any info would be appreciated!
thanks