Before I begin I will preface my request by acknowledging that this question has been asked before. However, I ensure you that I have thoroughly examined all available and related questions on this site and google to no avail. I'm asking as last resort. Let me begin.
A few days ago, after I let my battery run out, my WiFi mysteriously was disabled. The 'Enable WiFi' option was grayed out and unable to be clicked. For some reason, Airplane Mode was enabled. I turned it off, and tried enabling wifi through the control panel thing, but it would immediately toggle back to Off. Just for reference, I am running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.
The output of rfkill list is as follows:
0: phy0: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: yes
1: i2400m-usb:1-1.6:1.0: WiMAX
Soft blocked: yes
Hard blocked: no
The command rfkill unblock all (or even rfkill unblock 0) had no effect.
The output of sudo lshw -c network is as follows:
*-network
description: Ethernet interface
product: RTL8101/2/6E PCI Express Fast/Gigabit Ethernet controller
vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
logical name: enp1s0
version: 05
serial: 1c:75:08:6f:8d:b3
size: 100Mbit/s
capacity: 100Mbit/s
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix vpd bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd autonegotiation
configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=r8169 driverversion=2.3LK-NAPI duplex=full firmware=rtl_nic/rtl8168e-2.fw ip=10.0.0.6 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=MII speed=100Mbit/s
resources: irq:24 ioport:6000(size=256) memory:d0404000-d0404fff memory:d0400000-d0403fff
*-network DISABLED
description: Wireless interface
product: Centrino Advanced-N + WiMAX 6250 [Kilmer Peak]
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:06:00.0
logical name: wlp6s0
version: 5f
serial: 00:23:15:96:7c:20
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwlwifi driverversion=4.4.0-38-generic firmware=41.28.5.1 build 33926 latency=0 link=no multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11abgn
resources: irq:28 memory:d4600000-d4601fff
*-network DISABLED
description: Ethernet interface
physical id: 2
logical name: enx64d4da1963ef
serial: 64:d4:da:19:63:ef
capabilities: ethernet physical
configuration: driver=i2400m_usb firmware=i6050-fw-usb-1.5.sbcf link=no
Output of modinfo iwlwifi: http://pastebin.com/8xuQMRSt
Output of lsmod | grep -e acpi -e wmi: http://pastebin.com/FZFcnx6w
I can assure that I have looked at other solutions, all to no avail, such as:
-Checking to see if I can enable wifi in BIOS (I cannot)
-Taking out the battery pack, and pressing the power button and restarting (doesn't work)
-Triggering sleep mode in an effort to reset my computer (doesn't work)
It should be said that I have tried my fn+f8 button. Interestingly, this turns Airplane mode back on. All my function buttons seem to work fine, but the Wifi fn key only serves to disable wifi. On Toshiba Satellite computers there is a touch key panel between the speakers that has controls such as volume, wifi. This panel, which worked in windows, does not work in Ubuntu.
The best solution for this problem that I know is to boot windows and enable wifi through windows using the touch pad. But, unfortunately, I no longer have a working copy of windows.
Alas, I am at wits end! From what I read this hard-blocked wifi problem seems to occur frequently and all solutions that have worked for others, are not working for me. So I ask for your help, oh wise, benevolent sages of Ubuntu. Or I fear that my laptop will forever be tethered to an Ethernet cable.
