Wireless Connection disabled in elementary OS on Lenovo t430s. Help?

Question

Totally new to elementary OS and Linux, but I have been working hard to try to understand more about this wonderful world of Linux.

I will cut it short - my wifi was not working on Windows 10, mainly because airplane mode would not shut off. For some reason, I went ahead and still did a clean install of elementary OS. Mind you, this is a project laptop, but I would still like it to work.

So I did some research and found some lines of code and now on elementary OS, airplane mode is not on anymore, but WIFI is disabled. Running "SUDO RFKILL UNBLOCK ALL" is not getting any results. RFKILL List is showing a hardblock on the wireless lan phy0... I am totally lost. I did some research, and I am slowly learning, but I am way too lost at this moment. Can anyone help me?

Please, any advice as to how to enable wifi and change that hardblock would be great. Does a hardblock mean that something is blocking the connection hardware wise? The toggle for my laptop is on, and it has always been on. I have also removed, cleaned, and reattached the wifi card. I am totally lost here.

HELP!

Thanks!

Answer 1

I had exactly the same problem on a T430 a year ago. I was going nuts until one of my colleagues calmly pointed out the little switch on the right hand side of the base. I slid this across and wifi sprang to life - essentially it wasn't clear which was was on and which was off. I cursed that I hadn't known about that a couple of hours earlier... There is a BIOS switch as well but that had been allowing wifi all the time.

Check https://support.lenovo.com/gb/en/solutions/pd025182 for more details.

Answer 2

This might seem silly, but doesn't a hard block mean that there is a physical button or switch on the laptop that turns off all radios? You said that yours is on, but maybe it's broken in the off position? That might explain why it's not working in Windows 10 too. Also check that wifi is enabled in the BIOS.