How do I fix a "Wireless is disabled by hardware switch" error?

Solution 1:

Same happened to me, simply resolved with:

rfkill unblock all

rfkill list all showed some devices on soft block.

Solution 2:

There are two types of radio kill switches: 'hard' (or physical) and 'soft' (software). The rfkill list command will tell you whether either (or both) of these are set for any connected radio devices.

If your wireless card shows "Hard blocked: yes", then a physical switch on your laptop case is turned off. Turn it on.

If your card shows "Soft blocked: yes", then you can turn it back on by running rfkill unblock <ID> where is replaced by the number from the rfkill list command.

There is a bug in network-manager, where if you disabled wifi by right-clicking on the applet and un-checking "Enable Wireless", then the menu option becomes grayed out and can no longer be re-enabled. This persists after rebooting. It looks like NM is soft-blocking the wireless card when you disable it (which is a reasonable thing to do), but then graying out the menu item because it is soft-blocked (which is not a reasonable thing to do).

Solution 3:

if you just want to reactivate your wifi...

sudo rfkill unblock wifi

Solution 4:

Try this $ sudo rfkill unblock all

Also hit the key on your keyboard that switches your wifi on and off.

Another method that usually 100% effective is to simply connect your cable wire to your laptop for a few minutes then unplug it. Reboot and your wifi should be working.

Also as mentioned above network manager is buggy.

I like to use WICD because it is a simple and easy to use network manager. Its a very good alternative to network manager in Ubuntu and it seems to always work when Network Manager doesn't. To install it just open up the terminal.

To download and install WICD

sudo apt-get install wicd-gtk 

And now you need to uninstall NetworkManager:

sudo apt-get remove --purge network-manager-gnome network-manager 

Now you can find WICD in your menu Start WICD, find the network you want to use and enter the information needed, password, encryption, etcetera and choose Automatically Connect to this network. You should be good to go!

WICD may also be available in Ubuntu Update Manager so you can look there first but it is important to uninstall Network Manager completely to prevent conflicts!!