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I have installed Ubuntu 12.04 on Dell Vostro 1520 Laptop. But found Wifi is hardware locked, though wifi is working perfectly fine with Windows 7 in the same laptop.

I tried to upgrade the drivers as mentioned in other posts/forums but could not resolve the issue.

I had the similar problem with versions 11.* as well. Last time the Wifi worked with 10.* version.

Please help me to get it resolved.

Nabeel Ahmed
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user65696
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    Welcome to Ask Ubuntu! We need more hardware information to help you, can you look at [this question](http://askubuntu.com/questions/14008/i-have-a-hardware-detection-problem-what-logs-do-i-need-to-look-into) and then edit your question adding the information. – Jorge Castro May 24 '12 at 00:18

3 Answers3

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I have a Vostro 1520 on which I just upgraded to 12.04. Even though my wifi was working on 10.04, I have to re-do what I've done on 10.04... Here it is:

sudo rmmod dell_laptop

At this point, wireless indicator will light up and after a while, you'll be able to connect to the available wi-fi access points. However, the dell_laptop kernel module will get loaded again on bootup and hence, the fix is not permanent. Let's make it so:

echo 'blacklist dell_laptop' | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-custom

Wireless should be working fine from now on.

It did on my laptop.

Hope this helps!

Eliah Kagan
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EricP
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I had a hard time making the WiFi work after installing Ubuntu 12.10 on Dell XPS. Running rfkill list all always returned:

0: phy0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: yes

After trying almost everyone of the tons of suggestions about this problem on the Ubuntu forums, and none of them worked form, I simply tried Fn+F2 (the F2 key has the WiFi sign) and the problem disappeared.

The simple solution (unless you have a deeper problem) is Fn+F2 (or whatever key with the WiFi sign).

BuZZ-dEE
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momusa
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I also faced the same problem when upgraded to 11.10. I tried the auto updating using the hard line -ethernet cable - , but didn't work. After some research I finally made it. In the end, these commands made my day.

To make this work, your must be connected to Internet, so use LAN cable.

sudo apt-get purge bcmwl-kernel-source broadcom-sta-common broadcom-sta-source
sudo apt-get install b43-fwcutter firmware-b43-installer

Then reboot.

Community
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Nabeel Ahmed
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