Hi, please forgive me if I ask anything too pedestrian. I am a new Linux user, recently migrating from Windows, and I have no idea where to even begin troubleshooting. Also, please excuse my English as it is not my first language.
I had an old Notebook HP 430 that I wanted to give new life to, so I installed Zorin 17 on it. On the second day of the install, the Wi-Fi stopped working. It connected to the Wi-Fi just fine at first, when I turned it on the next day, I'd get the "no Wi-Fi" adapter found message.
After googling my issue, and fidgeting with the settings and the terminal, I managed to get the Wi-Fi working again. However, I honestly have no idea what it is that I did to manage to get it working, and after about a month, I honestly forgot that I even had that issue.
The problem is that today, when I booted up the Notebook, the Wi-Fi has once again stopped working, and I again see the "No Wi-Fi adapter found" when trying to connect to the network. I'm not sure if it's an update to Zorin that messed with the drivers, or if it's something else. As I said, I am a complete novice when it comes to Linux, and even back when I used Windows, I wasn't exactly tech savvy. I'd appreaciate if anyone could provide any support.
Do you happen to recall if you had installed updates before you went to shutdown your computer the last time before booting it up again to find that it's not working again?
In addition, if you could open a terminal and run this command, that would help us with what model wireless card you have:
lspci
And also, just to check what kernel you're running:
uname -r
Those will give us a little bit more information pertaining and hopefully find something useful out of them.
Hi, thank you for taking the time to help me with this. I do believe I did install an update a couple of weeks ago, but the Wi-Fi still worked fine after that. If I did install an update that broke the Wi-Fi, I have no recollection of it.
Here's what I get when running lspci:
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family DRAM Controller (rev 09)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 04)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev b4)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 3 (rev b4)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 5 (rev b4)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation HM65 Express Chipset LPC Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family 6 port Mobile SATA AHCI Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller (rev 04)
01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 06)
02:00.0 Network controller: Qualcomm Atheros AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)
03:00.0 Unassigned class [ff00]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTS5209 PCI Express Card Reader (rev 01)
Ok, so basically what this is saying is, something hardware wise is blocking your wifi from working (this wifi card as far as I can tell should be functioning correctly by default).
Does your keyboard have a key combination that would turn off the wireless communication for the whole computer? For me I have a key combination of Fn + F8, as an example. That would constitute a hard block.
If you don't see anything or maybe you've tried the key combination and nothing changes, you could also try after that:
My keyboard does have such a combination. It's Fn + F12 . Normally, the F12 key has a little light on it to indicate whether the WiFi is turned on or not. If it's blue, then it's on, if it's red, it's off. Since the light was blue, I didn't even think of trying it. Well, I tried it and now it's working fine.
Thank you so much for taking your time to help me. I am going to go and hide myself in shame now.
