Wireless Networks is grayed out on Dell vostro 1520

Question

I had Windows Vista installed on computer prior and had no problems connecting to wireless internet. Now I install the latest release (Ubuntu 12.04) and it has never been able to connect to wireless internet. The wireless networks icon is grayed out.

rfkill list

3: phy0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no
6: hci0: Bluetooth
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no


sudo lshw -C network



  *-network               
       description: Ethernet interface
       product: RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller
       vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:08:00.0
       logical name: eth0
       version: 03
       serial: 00:24:e8:da:84:25
       size: 10Mbit/s
       capacity: 1Gbit/s
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix vpd bus_master cap_list rom ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt 1000bt-fd autonegotiation
       configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=r8169 driverversion=2.3LK-NAPI duplex=half firmware=rtl_nic/rtl8168d-1.fw latency=0 link=no multicast=yes port=MII speed=10Mbit/s
       resources: irq:47 ioport:3000(size=256) memory:f6004000-f6004fff memory:f6000000-f6003fff memory:f6020000-f603ffff
  *-network
       description: Network controller
       product: BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY
       vendor: Broadcom Corporation
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:0e:00.0
       version: 01
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list
       configuration: driver=b43-pci-bridge latency=0
       resources: irq:18 memory:fa000000-fa003fff
      *-network DISABLED
       description: Wireless interface
       physical id: 2
       logical name: wlan0
       serial: 0c:60:76:05:ee:74
       capabilities: ethernet physical wireless
       configuration: broadcast=yes driver=b43 driverversion=3.2.0-23-generic-pae firmware=N/A link=no multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bg

I went to system > additional drivers and it pops up with "Downloading package indexes failed, please check your network status. Most drivers will not be available."

I ran

tar xzvf '/home/johnmerlino/Desktop/hybrid-portsrc_x86_32-v5_100_82_112.tar.gz' 

in the terminal. It looks like it executed some C code, adding header files to src directories.

However, I still got the

"Downloading package indexes failed, please check your network status. Most drivers will not be available."

error message when trying to open additional drivers dialogue.

Then I tried running this from terminal:

 $ sudo rmmod dell_laptop

I tried it before and it did nothing. Then when I tried it again, it gives me a message:

"module dell_laptop does not exist in /proc/modules"

I also removed my battery and unplugged comptuer and then added it all back and turned on computer.

After all this, I return to network tab and nothing has changed. Wireless networks still remains grayed out.