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Sahil
Asked: 2012-05-19 09:05:20 +0800 CST

How do I fix a "Wireless is disabled by hardware switch" error?

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I just updated to Ubuntu 12.04 from 11.10 but soon after updating I was disappointed to see that

Wireless is disabled by hardware switch.

I can not click the button 'Enable wireless' which is greyed out. Without wireless my computer is useless as I have to connect by wire which is not practical. I have a Acer TravelMate 4500

networking wireless hardware acer

6 Answers

  1. Same happened to me, simply resolved with:

    rfkill unblock all

    rfkill list all showed some devices on soft block.

    • 80

  2. There are two types of radio kill switches: 'hard' (or physical) and 'soft' (software). The rfkill list command will tell you whether either (or both) of these are set for any connected radio devices.

    If your wireless card shows "Hard blocked: yes", then a physical switch on your laptop case is turned off. Turn it on.

    If your card shows "Soft blocked: yes", then you can turn it back on by running rfkill unblock <ID> where is replaced by the number from the rfkill list command.

    There is a bug in network-manager, where if you disabled wifi by right-clicking on the applet and un-checking "Enable Wireless", then the menu option becomes grayed out and can no longer be re-enabled. This persists after rebooting. It looks like NM is soft-blocking the wireless card when you disable it (which is a reasonable thing to do), but then graying out the menu item because it is soft-blocked (which is not a reasonable thing to do).

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  3. if you just want to reactivate your wifi...

    sudo rfkill unblock wifi
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  4. Try this $ sudo rfkill unblock all

    Also hit the key on your keyboard that switches your wifi on and off.

    Another method that usually 100% effective is to simply connect your cable wire to your laptop for a few minutes then unplug it. Reboot and your wifi should be working.

    Also as mentioned above network manager is buggy.

    I like to use WICD because it is a simple and easy to use network manager. Its a very good alternative to network manager in Ubuntu and it seems to always work when Network Manager doesn't. To install it just open up the terminal.

    To download and install WICD

    sudo apt-get install wicd-gtk

    And now you need to uninstall NetworkManager:

    sudo apt-get remove --purge network-manager-gnome network-manager

    Now you can find WICD in your menu Start WICD, find the network you want to use and enter the information needed, password, encryption, etcetera and choose Automatically Connect to this network. You should be good to go!

    WICD may also be available in Ubuntu Update Manager so you can look there first but it is important to uninstall Network Manager completely to prevent conflicts!!

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  5. I don't know the Acer Travelmate 4500 but I had a similar problem with a Dell laptop.

    Firstly I assume there is no hardware switch ie a physical wireless switch on the side or underneath the laptop?

    If not then, interrupt the boot sequence by pressing the F2 key "Set up" (it may be a different key on your machine) and then look for the wireless settings and ensure they are set correctly.

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  6. Some machines using a Linux OS don't support toggling by hard switch. In my case, I also had Windows 7 installed on my system. All I did was boot into Windows and turned on Wi-Fi by hard switch.

    The next time when I ran my Ubuntu OS, it started to get Wi-Fi signals for all routers.

    Note: I tested this solution on a Lenovo B570e.

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