Wifi disabled by hardware switch

Issues related to configuring your network
Post Reply
vilsad
Posts: 1
Joined: 2014/07/15 16:28:59

Wifi disabled by hardware switch

Post by vilsad » 2014/07/15 16:39:16

I made a clean install of centos 7 in my lenovo z570 today. i am new to linux. when i tried to configure the WIFI network i am seeing this message in the menu 'Wifi disabled by hardware'. after lot of googling i understood that if i booted to windows and flicked the switch, i will be able to use wifi. but since i don't have windows installed, i couldn't do it. how ever i found that if i reset the bios by the following step it works fine. i removed the battery and pressed the power button for 30 seconds and then after inserting the battery and loaded the bios defaults using F9 key and after saving and while restarting pressing the power button for 10 seconds when showing the bios logo to turn off and then starting the computer. this way it works,but i do have to do this for every time when i start. how do i permanently fix this issue. i had the same issue in ubuntu, the same procedure was done to fix. thats why i switched to centos

gerald_clark
Posts: 10642
Joined: 2005/08/05 15:19:54
Location: Northern Illinois, USA

Re: Wifi disabled by hardware switch

Post by gerald_clark » 2014/07/15 17:28:07

My Dell laptop has a Fn key combo to toggle the WIFI.

User avatar
Super Jamie
Posts: 310
Joined: 2014/01/10 23:44:51

Re: Wifi disabled by hardware switch

Post by Super Jamie » 2014/07/25 11:58:47

The hardware switch is either a Fn key, or an actual switch on the laptop housing which turns the wifi on and off.

Often the same switch toggles Bluetooth as well, so try turning the Bluetooth on.

On some systems, if you plug a network cable in, it toggles a wifi switch. So you cannot use wifi and ethernet at the same time. This is usually configurable from the BIOS.

Post Reply