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Knowledge Base > Wireless > How can I reset my wireless driver if my wireless card will not associate?

How can I reset my wireless driver if my wireless card will not associate?

Sometime a wireless interface using DriverLoader may not be able to associate after running a series of test cases. Before starting the next run of tests, you may need to restart/reset the wireless driver. This can be done as follows:

  • Stop the associated wireless network interface (typically labeled as ethX or wlanX): 

      # /sbin/ifdown wlan0

  • Restart DriverLoader: 

      # /etc/init.d/driverloader restart

  • Restart the associated wireless network interface:: 

      # /sbin/ifup wlan0

To check that the wireless interface has come back up properly you can issue the ifconfig command and verify that the interface is available. You can also do a simple scan to verify that the interface is seeing wireless networks: 

  # /sbin/ifconfig -a
  # iwlist wlan0 scan