[SOLVED] Lenovo wireless toggle switch kills wireless permanently

Trilby · 2012-06-03 09:05:19

I'm currently travelling and only have my netbook. While on the plane I flipped the wireless switch to off. Back on ground I turned it back on, but my wireless has not come back.

I've done all the troubleshooting I can, and have searched through seemingly related threads, but to no avail.

I report the use of the switch as otherwise it is an odd coincidence (I suppose my computer was also xrayed by security during the same period). Yet, when I check rfkill events, it shows the switch as a hardblock, but the hardblock is not the problem.

Rfkill is also showing a softblock. I've tried shutting this off two ways: Fn-F5 which is my netbooks key for this function, and the rfkill command itself. They both "work" and I can confirm through rfkill events that both of these methods are turning the softblock on and off.

Of course if I tried to use ifconfig or iwconfig when the softblock is on, I get the rf-kill error message. However, as soon as I try any means up bringing up wlan0 (ifconfig, wicd) my computer completely freezes. I am unable to change to another tty, and nothing registers. I have to force power off and restart. Once I restart I check the logs. I am no expert at reading logs, but I've checked the wicd logs, everything.log, errors.log, and a few others - I can find nothing out of the ordinary.

Any help would be very much appreciated. Also please let me know of any troubleshooting info gathering steps that may be useful. I'm am beyond a complete noob when it comes to networking.

Edit just for your fun at my expense: I couldn't figure out why I couldn't update with pacman (through this wired connection I'm using). Finally I realized that my massachusetts-optimized mirrorlist wasn't much good in the middle of the Pacific! A quick run of reflector solved that problem.

SOLUTION

After searching, experimenting, and desperately hoping to find something better ... and after being greatly disapointed after calling Lenovo support ("Is it plugged in?") ... I eventually (following online/forum guides) disassebled the netbook, unplugged the CMOS battery, waited a while, plugged it back in, reassembled, (detour: forgot to reconnect keyboard, disassembled again, connected keyboard, reassembled) and now wireless worked fine. I was dumped into a recovery shell to "repair" partitions who's timestamps were after the CMOS time of course. This took a couple reboots, but now all is well - except for my appreciation of Lenovo, that is out the window. Their rep actually admitted to me that they were well aware that their netbooks had a fatal flaw and that they have known if for years but have gone on selling them and they don't really care if it's a problem. Fu&*(ers.

Edit: changed title to be more likely to be found by others with the same problem.

Last edited by Trilby (2012-06-10 21:56:42)

Trilby · 2012-06-03 23:29:31

I've just tried broadcom-wl, b43 and b43legacy. The latter two will not even create an interface (not listed under ifconfig -a after they are loaded). Wl created a wireless interface and called it 'eth1' instead of wlan0. This to had an rfkill block, but I was able to unblock this and bring up the interface without any errors or freezing.

Sadly scanning on "eth1" (actually a wireless interface) didn't show any accesspoints while I know there are some present.

How do rfkill softblocks get set on boot? I've tried turning off all softblocks and rebooting, but upon successful reboot the softblocks are back. Then disabling them works, until I tried to bring up a wireless interface, then again a complete freeze and hard reboot.

Edit: I blacklisted the rfkill module (in modprobe.conf.d) but it still boots with a softblock on all interfaces.

Edit2: if anyone is willing to help, this looks like the issue, but I can't make heads or tails of it. There is no clear solution there.

Edit3: Another, indicating that, if that poster was correct, that my netbook is now effectively an expensive paperweight.

Last edited by Trilby (2012-06-03 23:51:51)

Arch Linux

#1 2012-06-03 09:05:19

[SOLVED] Lenovo wireless toggle switch kills wireless permanently

#2 2012-06-03 23:29:31

Re: [SOLVED] Lenovo wireless toggle switch kills wireless permanently

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