WiFi disabled by hard switch

Question

My WiFi is disabled.

I have an asus r704v laptop and there is no hardware switch to turn WiFi on/off, thus I cannot go online using WiFi.

The driver is the correct one for the realtrek card. How do I switch my WiFi on?

Answer 1

I think your Wifi adapter is blocked. you can unblock your WiFi adapter by using sudo rfkill unblock all command in Terminal (use Ctrl+Alt+T to open).

Answer 2

This is not an Ubuntu issue. This is not any driver issue. This is caused by me (and possibly you).

While watching some video... I tried to increase volume with: Fn + F10 key combination ... But I mistakenly pressed Fn + F12 which was Wifi button with 'Radio' symbol on it, which disabled my wifi connection.

Running below command in Terminal, you can see the issue:

> rfkill list all

0: Toshiba Bluetooth: Bluetooth           #or whatever it is
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no
1: phy0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: yes    `<------ that's because I press Wifi button (above) mistakenly

Solution: Press again the Fn + F12 (or, some other key where you have Radio symbol)

Now run again the same command:

> rfkill list all

    0: Toshiba Bluetooth: Bluetooth           #or whatever it is
        Soft blocked: no
        Hard blocked: no
    1: phy0: Wireless LAN
        Soft blocked: no
        Hard blocked: no

    <------ no means solved.

Now, go to:

(Windows button, if you have on the keyboard) > Settings > Wifi > move to On > select your Wiki connection to enter credentials

Done, your internet is back on.

Reference = here

I hope this works ...