Ideapadu350 wlan HW switch not working anymore

[_dan_]

Hello there

On my 1 year old Ideapd u350, the hardware switch to enable/disable the wifi "somewhat" died.

Its is off now and i can not enable it again, when i switch the switch, the little led that should be lit, is not, nor does the network connect to anything. Windows reports that i should enable the hw switch, linux reports wifi disabled by rf- switch.

With the linux command rfkill, i can see, when pushing the switch, that it toggles correctly, windows show some on screen popup that its enabled, but it just does not work.

What can i do now?

-dan

[yigit]

contact lenovo support line and ship your laptop back to service.

[_dan_]

Well warrenty ran out, so thats not much of an option.

[yigit]

are you sure it's switch? wireless adapter could be dead.

[_dan_]

Its something in between the switch and the adapter.

Adapter shows up on "lspci" and linux can load firmware correctly, iwconfig shows al settings etc etc but when i want to "ifconfig wlan0 up" i get the "adapter disabled by rf-switch" thing. Behaviour is the same in Windows OS, just less output(none)

Wireless Led is not light up either, but both windows and linux reckognize when i flip the switch.

[yigit]

could be connector cable is loose, or anything else. if you have another computer, you can check if your wireless is working properly.

[_dan_]

Its definitely the laptop, since wlan led is not light up either. My wlan works properly.

In my country (austria) mandatory warranty is 2 years, called "gewährleistung" here, does lenovo recognize this?

[_dan_ · Accepted solution]

So, I solved the problem, just in case someone in the future runs into the same Problem (found some Google hits on the same topic, without solution) here is how I fixed it.

There is no way, at least I found none, to fix that under Linux, it seems to be an odd implementation by either lenovo and/or the driver.

fn+f5 toggles softblock in Linux, while fn+f5 toggles hardblock in windows, or at least some kind of hardblock, its even so hard blocked that the physical switch does not work anymore, so to fix that, boot windows, hit fn+f5 and activate the wifi, it then will work on Linux aswell. Very odd behavior, windows SW settings override physical hw switch.

-dan

[yigit]

warranty conditions may change by country. it's better you to call lenovo support line just in case you may need.

[spazmochad]

FYI FN+F5 works fine under Mint 11 with the 2.6.39 kernal, also solves the random boot issue.