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What could be making WiFi to get "hardblocked" by hardware between reboots?

ro flag

I bring this question up in the hope that someone knowledgeable would shed some light into the issue.

I am currently running Xubuntu 22.10 in a VAIO laptop (don't know much about its specifications) after having upgraded it from 22.04. Ever since, I have been experiencing something strange with my wifi: it wasn't working and it appeared as "disable" and with the rfkill command I realized it was "hardblocked".

I started googling and attempting some of the solutions offered in different posts around the web, but none of them seemed to work. I rebooted the laptop to "apply the changes" but nothing changed.

Well, after some days of having the wifi disabled, one day, it worked fine... the next days (having turned off the laptop for the day and turned it back on the next one) it wasn't working again... and so on.

There are days in which it "magically" works and there are others in which it doesn't.

Is there anything that you think might be causing this "randomness"? I don't know exactly how many times I have to turn off and on the laptop for the wifi to start working again.

It is working right now... after 4 reboots. But the moment I turn it off and back on, it'll be all disabled again...

guiverc avatar
cn flag
The *randomness* as you put it would imply a hardware problem with the device.... I'd likely boot a *live* system that was very different to your Ubuntu/Xubuntu systems & perform tests on it there, as your issue I believe is unrelated to Ubuntu/Xubuntu (*at least how you describe it*)
in flag
Vaio notebooks haven’t been made in quite some time. Even when they were new, the things had a terrible habit of the little antenna wires that lead up and around the display from the wifi card getting brittle and fraying, which would cause the card to stop working when the notebook lid was opened in “just such a way”. Every so often, opening/closing the lid would twist the antenna cable enough to no longer create problems and things would be fine for a few days/weeks. No idea if this is the issue you’re experiencing, but it’s one I’ve fought with in the mid-2000s
José Rojas avatar
ro flag
@matigo thank you. I never close the lid to the laptop. And yes, it is an old laptop that was gifted to me. I've had it for like 2 years and always running ubuntu, always upgrading it to the latest release. With all upgrades, there were "things to solve", once with libreoffice closing, once with sound... this last time is this issue. It all started after the upgrade to 22.10.
José Rojas avatar
ro flag
@user535733 the physical button present in this laptop is and has always been on. I have of course switched sever times but there were no changes. There is not option in the BIOS to enable or disable wifi.
José Rojas avatar
ro flag
As of today, wifi is working fine. I had to turn on and off the laptop 4 times too, until it finally worked.
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