HP Compaq 2510p wireless disabled by hardware switch

I have an HP Compaq 2510p laptop running ubuntu 12.04 LTS. ubuntu reports that wireless is disabled by means of a hardware switch. There is a 'soft-key' button on the laptop to control the physical wireless hardware but this does not respond. There is no other button, slider, (fn)+ combination to control the physical wireless hardware. There is no BIOS function to disable wireless (and on XP - previous OS - wireless functioned fine).

mike@ubuntu:~$ rfkill list all
0: brcmwl-0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: yes
1: hp-wifi: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no

Running rfkill unblock all doesn't change things and I can see no way to change use from 0: to 1: (if that's even possible - or desirable - in the first place).

I have checked for additional drivers and the Broadcom proprietary wireless driver is already installed and has a green light.

Essentially, I believe I need to make the HP 'soft-keys' work - or at least the wireless card toggle.

I don't know if it's applicable to your situation but I had pretty much the same problem with my ProBook 6550b.

You just need to turn on the wireless while you're at the login screen. Because for some reason you cannot turn it on again if it was turned off before the login

I just noticed the same problem today with my 2510p. Solution: restore the BIOS defaults.