“Hardware Disabled” after RealTek RTL8188CE wireless driver install

Question

Just converted my ThinkPad x120e to Ubuntu Gnome 14.04 (kernal 3.16.0-43-generic), I followed the step by step instructions provided by Freedom_Ben (thanks!) everything seemed to install correctly, but I can not seem to get the interface up. The graphical interface says "Hardware Disabled".

lshw -c Network
 *-network DISABLED
       description: Wireless interface
       product: RTL8188CE 802.11b/g/n WiFi Adapter
       vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:04:00.0
       logical name: wlan0
       version: 01
       serial: 88:9f:fa:fd:98:25
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
       configuration: broadcast=yes driver=rtl8192ce driverversion=3.16.0-43-generic firmware=N/A latency=0 link=no multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bgn
       resources: irq:17 ioport:2000(size=256) memory:f0100000-f0103fff

rfkill list all
0: tpacpi_bluetooth_sw: Bluetooth
    Soft blocked: yes
    Hard blocked: yes
1: phy0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: yes

I have tried what I think is the enable/disable wifi (Fn5) but can not seem to get the wireless network to come up.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Answer 1

I searched the forums trying to find hints as to what was going on. It looked like my wireless capability was shut off (rfkill list all was showing "phy0: Wireless LAN Hard blocked yes") and there was nothing I could do to get it to go to "Hard blocked no". The function key to enable/disable the wireless was not working (fn-F5). I loaded Ubuntu Gnome 14.04 and updated the rtl8188ce driver, no luck, even tried mint 17.2,, same thing, no luck. Finally what I did was used a clonezilla copy of a windows 7 image I saved off, reloaded the ThinkPad x120e, saw that the wireless was disabled, used the Fn-F5 to bring up the gui to enable the wireless,the wireless came up so I then used the USB live (no CD on the netbook) Ubuntu install stick to bring up the "live" version (running ubuntu from the usb drive) and saw the wireless was enabled (rfkill list all showed "phy0: Wireless LAN Hard blocked no" as well as the Soft blocked set to no). Yea!! I then proceeded to reinstall Ubuntu Gnome 14.04 and when it came up, the wireless was working! Not going to touch the Fn-F5!! Success!