Tuesday, 12 July 2011

Solution to 'Wireless disabled by Hardware switch'

Ohhh ... Suddenly my wifi goes off( a combination of DELL with Ubuntu natty) and got a display - wireless disabled by hardware switch. Got down to googling and finally got this.

To get back your wifi to start working, type in the following:

$:  sudo rfkill list

You will get back something like this.

0: dell-wifi: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: yes
    Hard blocked: no
1: dell-bluetooth: Bluetooth
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no
2: phy0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: yes
    Hard blocked: no
4: hci0: Bluetooth
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no

As you could see (0,2) the Wireless Lan has been soft blocked.  We need to unblock it to get it up and working properly.

$: sudo rfkill unblock 0

$: sudo rfkill unblock 2

 

Restart your networking

$: sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

 

and yup! the wifi should be back now.
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14 comments:

  1. wilbefastefast16 August 2011 at 05:35

    "rfkill unblock all" worked for me without any further commands - thanks for the pointer :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. kelifkelif8 November 2011 at 02:29

    i had this:
    0: hp-wifi: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: yes
    Hard blocked: no
    1: phy0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: yes
    Hard blocked: no
    and after that i have this:
    0: hp-wifi: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: yes
    Hard blocked: yes
    1: phy0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no

    ReplyDelete
  3. arise22 November 2011 at 06:53

    Hai Sunil Kumar,
    I had the same problem but the above method didint work for me
    result of sudo rfkill list is as follows, please give a reply
    0: dell-wifi: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: yes
    Hard blocked: yes
    1: dell-bluetooth: Bluetooth
    Soft blocked: yes
    Hard blocked: yes
    2: brcmwl-0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: yes

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sunil kumar22 November 2011 at 08:56

    Try
    $ sudo rfkill unblock all

    ReplyDelete
  5. Sunil kumar22 November 2011 at 09:17

    You also have your wi-fi hard blocked. Unblock that first(press whichever key corresponds to your wifi), then do
    sudo rfkill unblock all

    ReplyDelete
  6. O31 March 2012 at 10:48

    Thanks!
    It works for me.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Shirish29 April 2012 at 17:53

    HI
    I just upgraded to 12.04 Ubuntu, and I have following problem, if you have any help for me let me know please.

    shirish@shirish-Inspiron-1545:~$ rfkill list all

    0: brcmwl-0: Wireless LAN

    Soft blocked: no

    Hard blocked: yes

    1: dell-wifi: Wireless LAN

    Soft blocked: yes

    Hard blocked: yes

    2: dell-bluetooth: Bluetooth

    Soft blocked: yes

    Hard blocked: yes

    what should I do now ????? I tried the ¨rfkill unblock all¨ but it does not work.

    ReplyDelete
  8. kostas9 May 2012 at 22:14

    Many Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  9. subritSM18 July 2012 at 18:32

    0: hp-wifi: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: yes
    1: phy0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no



    ---- I am having this. in ubuntu 12.04 with compaq presario 734TU.

    Tried but its not working..!!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Sunil kumar19 July 2012 at 02:20

    'sudo rfkill unblock all' didn't work?

    ReplyDelete
  11. subritSM19 July 2012 at 05:41

    nopes.! It didnt.
    But i made it work with installing the drivers!

    There are few drivers that needs to be installed.

    Here's the link "http://www.techytalk.info/ubuntu-ppas/ralink-wireless/"

    ReplyDelete
  12. abdulwadhood5 October 2012 at 09:05

    Thanks for the advice. But somehow the commands didn't work. Going to start from the scratch....

    PS: Man! Didn't know YOU have a blog :)

    ReplyDelete
  13. agiaram28 October 2012 at 08:38

    After i type this command, i get
    0: phy0: wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no
    1: hp-WiFi: wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no

    What now?

    ReplyDelete
  14. خدمات منزلية17 May 2020 at 15:34

    شركة تنظيف بابها

    شركة مكافحة حشرات بالدمام

    شركة مكافحة حشرات بالخبر

    ReplyDelete

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