Wireless stopped working on a Gateway LT2805u

Question

Short and sweet. Gateway LT2805u Netbook Running Ubuntu 10.04. Wireless suddenly stopped working. RFKill shows no output. And the wireless card shows "Unclaimed".

Card is an Atheros (ar9285 i think). My hardware switch is the F3 key but it has no effect. If I load Ubuntu 11.10 it all seems to work fine, but to be honest I'm not crazy about the interface (Unity?). Also, I am brand new to Ubuntu so please forgive my extreme noobness.

Answer 1

It seems many people are having a problem with that wireless card and I could not find a solution that works for everyone.

The most common solution is

echo "blacklist acer_wmi" | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
echo "options ath9k nohwcrypt=1" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/ath9k.conf

Then reboot.

Posted on this blog - http://ubuntulinuxgethelp.com/2012/02/ubuntu-sony-vaio-atheros-ar9285-suddenly-keeps-dropping-wifi-connection/

Same commands are posted on the forums and askubuntu

Example: Why is my internet so slow with an Atheros wireless card?

You can also try (you will have to enable the backports repository first).

sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-wireless-lucid-generic

From https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Device/Atheros/AR9285

My advice would be for you to try a more up to date version of Ubuntu as this is goin gto be dependent on the kernel. You may want to try 12.04, and if it does not work, file a bug report.