Can a Laptop forget how to Wifi?

[frankthegerman]

Mine certainly did. Around the last one or two updates (Sorry for not being more specific, i usually connect to an Ethernet cable) the Wifi on my laptop started playing up. It still shows as being connected but when i try any of the browsers, they all come back with error messages (telling me to check the connection). Yet when i tried TOR, it suddenly worked and i could get access to the Web. I've tried a few options now but seem to be out of ideas. Any help would be much appreciated.

[Pjotr]

Try restoring a recent Timeshift snapshot. Then install all updates one by one, until you've found the culprit.

[Larry78723]

Just a quick question. Is the ethernet cable connected when your wifi isn't working? Many laptops disable wifi when an ethernet connection is detected.

[frankthegerman]

This happens unfortunately with and without the cable plugged in

[Larry78723]

Please post an inxi -Fxxxzr report. This will give us a concise overview of your hardware and on how Mint sees it.

Here is how to generate the report and post it:
Open a terminal window (Ctrl-Alt-t). Make it fullscreen to avoid unneeded linebreaks or chopped lines. Execute the command

Code: Select all

 inxi -Fxxxzr 

exactly as it has been typed here.

Mark the complete text output which the command will display with your mouse.
Press the keyboard shortcut <Shift><Ctrl>C to copy the marked text into the clipboard.
Enclose the results between the code markers by selecting </> from the mini toolbar above the textbox where you type your reply then paste <Ctrl>V them in your reply between the code markers [code]Results [/code].

The results will help us to help you.
Larry

[frankthegerman]

Ok no problem here it goes:

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System:
  Host: frank-R519-R719 Kernel: 5.4.0-74-generic x86_64 bits: 64 
  compiler: gcc v: 7.5.0 Desktop: MATE 1.22.2 info: mate-panel 
  wm: marco 1.22.3 dm: LightDM 1.26.0 Distro: Linux Mint 19.3 Tricia 
  base: Ubuntu 18.04 bionic 
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: SAMSUNG product: R519/R719 v: N/A serial: <filter> 
  Chassis: type: 10 serial: <filter> 
  Mobo: SAMSUNG model: R519/R719 serial: <filter> BIOS: Phoenix 
  v: 01CI.M007.20090611.JIP date: 06/11/2009 
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT1 charge: 34.4 Wh condition: 34.4/44.4 Wh (77%) volts: 12.5/11.1 
  model: SAMSUNG Electronics type: Li-ion serial: N/A status: Full 
CPU:
  Topology: Dual Core model: Intel Pentium Dual T3400 bits: 64 type: MCP 
  arch: Core Merom rev: D L2 cache: 1024 KiB 
  flags: lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 ssse3 bogomips: 8644 
  Speed: 997 MHz min/max: 1000/2166 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 997 2: 997 
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel Mobile 4 Series Integrated Graphics vendor: Samsung Co 
  driver: i915 v: kernel bus ID: 00:02.0 chip ID: 8086:2a42 
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.19.6 driver: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa 
  compositor: marco v: 1.22.3 resolution: 1366x768~60Hz 
  OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Mobile Intel GM45 Express (CTG) 
  v: 2.1 Mesa 20.0.8 direct render: Yes 
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel 82801I HD Audio vendor: Samsung Co driver: snd_hda_intel 
  v: kernel bus ID: 00:1b.0 chip ID: 8086:293e 
  Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.4.0-74-generic 
Network:
  Device-1: Qualcomm Atheros AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter 
  vendor: Foxconn T77H121.05 802.11bgn driver: ath9k v: kernel port: 1c00 
  bus ID: 02:00.0 chip ID: 168c:002b 
  IF: wlp2s0 state: down mac: <filter> 
  Device-2: Realtek RTL810xE PCI Express Fast Ethernet vendor: Samsung Co 
  driver: r8169 v: kernel port: 3000 bus ID: 04:00.0 chip ID: 10ec:8136 
  IF: enp4s0 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter> 
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 298.09 GiB used: 62.59 GiB (21.0%) 
  ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Toshiba model: MK3276GSX -63 size: 298.09 GiB 
  speed: 3.0 Gb/s rotation: 5400 rpm serial: <filter> rev: 1X scheme: MBR 
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 38.48 GiB used: 31.14 GiB (80.9%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1 
  ID-2: /home size: 242.48 GiB used: 31.43 GiB (13.0%) fs: ext4 
  dev: /dev/sda2 
  ID-3: swap-1 size: 11.38 GiB used: 24.7 MiB (0.2%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sda3 
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 51.0 C mobo: N/A 
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
Repos:
  No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list 
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list 
  1: deb http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/packages.linuxmint.com/packages tricia main upstream import backport
  2: deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic main restricted universe multiverse
  3: deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates main restricted universe multiverse
  4: deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-backports main restricted universe multiverse
  5: deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic-security main restricted universe multiverse
  6: deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu/ bionic partner
Info:
  Processes: 181 Uptime: 15h 46m Memory: 3.78 GiB used: 2.39 GiB (63.3%) 
  Init: systemd v: 237 runlevel: 5 Compilers: gcc: 7.5.0 alt: 7 Shell: bash 
  v: 4.4.20 running in: mate-terminal inxi: 3.0.32 

[Larry78723]

Please establish a connection by other means on that computer then open a Terminal (Ctrl-Alt-T), click CODE:SELECT ALL, then copy-and-paste the following as one block of text into the Terminal window (Ctrl-Shift-V)...

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W=wireless-info;I=/usr/local/bin;U=sudo;${U} wget -q -nv -t 5 -T 10 https://github.com/UbuntuForums/$W/raw/master/$W -P $I/;\
cd ~/Downloads;V=$W.txt;$U chmod +x $I/$W;$W>/dev/null;(inxi -Fxxxrz;modinfo `inxi -n|grep -Po 'ver: \K[^ ]+'`|grep parm)>>$V;\
(lspci -nnkD;lsusb -tv;rfkill list;(lsmod;dmesg)|egrep -i "wl|firm|fail|blu|bt|rt";${U} os-prober;cat /proc/cmdline)>>$V;\
(iwconfig;lshw -c network;dkms status;mokutil --sb-state)>>$V 2>&1;tr -cd '\11\12\15\40-\176'<$V|nc termbin.com 9999;rm -f $W*.*

After a pause, a termbin.com URL will appear in the Terminal window. Paste that URL into a reply.

[frankthegerman]

This is what came back:

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https://termbin.com/6noxu

[Larry78723]

Your wifi is both hard blocked and soft blocked. Let's take care of the hard block first. Does your machine have a switch somewhere on the front or side for wifi? If not, does it have a function key that has like a radio tower on it? On my laptop, it's the F8 key.

[frankthegerman]

How did this happen? And on mine it seems to be F9. At least it seems to have some sort of triangular symbol on it which may resemble an arial...

[Larry78723]

Try activating using that key.

[frankthegerman]

Nothing changed unfortunately... it just stated that the airplane mode was disabled.

[Larry78723]

Please post the results of the following command:

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rfkill list

[frankthegerman]

This is it:

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0: phy0: Wireless LAN
	Soft blocked: no
	Hard blocked: no
1: samsung-wlan: Wireless LAN
	Soft blocked: no
	Hard blocked: no

[Larry78723]

Now post the results of

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inxi -nxxx

[frankthegerman]

This is what i got:

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Network:
  Device-1: Qualcomm Atheros AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter 
  vendor: Foxconn T77H121.05 802.11bgn driver: ath9k v: kernel port: 1c00 
  bus ID: 02:00.0 chip ID: 168c:002b 
  IF: wlp2s0 state: down mac: 00:26:5e:1f:19:64 
  Device-2: Realtek RTL810xE PCI Express Fast Ethernet vendor: Samsung Co 
  driver: r8169 v: kernel port: 3000 bus ID: 04:00.0 chip ID: 10ec:8136 
  IF: enp4s0 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac: 00:24:54:00:68:f0 

[JeremyB]

Post results from terminal for

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iwconfig; sudo cat /var/lib/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.state

[frankthegerman]

There was this:

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enp4s0    no wireless extensions.

wlp2s0    IEEE 802.11  ESSID:off/any  
          Mode:Managed  Access Point: Not-Associated   Tx-Power=14 dBm   
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          
lo        no wireless extensions.

...and also this:

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[main]
NetworkingEnabled=true
WirelessEnabled=false
WWANEnabled=true

[JeremyB]

Looks like the Airplane mode in Network Manager is on

[frankthegerman]

Unfortunately not. I have repeatedly enabled and disabled it.