Laptop won't recognise wifi card anymore

Question

Laptop model: Dell latitude E6420 Ubuntu version: 18.04.2 LTS

My wifi was working completely fine up until last night. Now, my laptop says "no wifi adapter found" and therefore won't let me connect. I've tried turning the power off and restarting it many times. I have tried some suggestions that I've found on here and none of them work.

However my computer is recognising the card as it shows up when I use lshw -C network and lspci. It shows up in the terminal but the setting application says it's not there. (I was going to add the output but I don't have enough reputation to add images here yet.)

What can I do?

Thanks.

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 26 '19 at 01:22

0

There have been reports of people having problems when moving from the 4.15 to 4.18 Linux kernel with some Dell hardware. You'll want to manually downgrade your Linux kernel, the easiest way to do that is using the Ubuntu Update Kernel Utility (UKUU)

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:teejee2008/ppa
sudo apt update
sudo apt-get install ukuu

Now launch the ukuu app and select one of the 4.15 kernels to downgrade to.

answered Feb 26 '19 at 01:22

Kristopher Ives

5,509

I will try and find an Ethernet cable somewhere and attempt this. – SJMcMullan Feb 26 '19 at 01:28
You can also try rebooting and holding Shift and you may have a 4.15 kernel installed still. – Kristopher Ives Feb 26 '19 at 01:29
Now it's not connecting via ethernet either. – SJMcMullan Feb 26 '19 at 01:47
Have you tried rebooting with an old kernel by holding Shift when the PC starts up? – Kristopher Ives Feb 26 '19 at 04:14

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 28 '19 at 00:19

I have figured out the problem and it has been rectified. This was not a problem with Ubuntu or any software at all; I realised that my laptop has a physical wifi switch. It must have been bumped and turned off in my backpack and that is why I was unable to connect.

Laptop won't recognise wifi card anymore

2 Answers2