couple of issues

[EndUnknown]

just installed Xubuntu Hardy Heron on a Dell Inspiron 5100 1. I cant use my usb drive. I get :mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb1,
missing codepage or helper program, or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so

2. I cant get wifi to work. The info (password, Ip Subnet) is correct. Im not sure of the model of the wireless card( I think it is a Broadcom 440x, but im not sure. how would I check?)

[Gow616]

If I remember right the Broadcom Wifi requires the ndiswrapper to get it to work.

Look through this for Wireless: http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=336

For the hard drive,

A removable USB drive indeed should not be mounted using /etc/fstab. If the volume is OK, the drive will mount automatically. As EXCiD3 already mentionned, an USB drive must be properly disconnected from windows. In practice this means that when using Windows, either

* you completely shut down Windows (no hibernation!)
or
* you use the tray icon to safely disconnect the drive

(same goes for Ubuntu!)

Other than that I got nothing other than directing you to the Ubuntu forums.

[EndUnknown]

I got the wifi fixed. now i need to figure out the usb. here is the result of dmesg | tail:
[ 1337.364661] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[ 1337.367757] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] 8027790 512-byte hardware sectors (4110 MB)
[ 1337.368761] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[ 1337.368767] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
[ 1337.368770] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[ 1337.368778] sdb: sdb1
[ 1337.370243] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
[ 1337.370296] sd 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
[ 1338.304921] UDF-fs: No partition found (1)
[ 1338.439427] ISOFS: Unable to identify CD-ROM format.



now what?