2014 edit: If you’re experiencing problems on Ubuntu 14.04 with wifi on your Lenovo laptop with a Centrino wifi chipset, try disabling wireless N.
See http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2208210&p=12943350#post12943350

Just updated my laptop to Natty Narwhal and I may write something about it in the future (spoiler: Unity sucks). Anyway this post is just about the solution I found for the broken wireless network manager applet in Ubuntu 10.10 and 11.04 in Lenovo B450 and probably most other Lenovo laptops.

Ever since I upgraded my laptop to Maverick Meerkat, my wireless isn’t automatically enabled on startup. It was no big deal back then since I could just simply tick the Enable Wireless in the network manager applet. But when I upgraded to Natty Narwhal, my wireless was permanently disabled.

After hours of trial and error, I found out the culprit. Running sudo rfkill list showed that I have an “acer-wireless” even though I wasn’t using an Acer machine:

bry@Abraxas:~$ sudo rfkill list
0: acer-wireless: Wireless LAN
        Soft blocked: yes
        Hard blocked: no
...

The solution to this was simple: disable it by adding blacklist acer-wmi at the end of /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf.

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10 Responses to Fix disabled wireless in Ubuntu on Lenovo laptops

  1. goola says:

    I have the same problems.but your solution is failed on my computer.

    root@goola:/home/goola# rfkill list
    0: ideapad_wlan: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: yes
    Hard blocked: no
    1: phy0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: yes
    Hard blocked: no
    I think i should use the hot-key(Fn+ F5),and then….
    root@goola:/home/goola# rfkill list
    0: ideapad_wlan: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no
    1: phy0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: yes

    is there still a answer??
    a man tired tousand ways,but failed one tousand times.please, help!!!

  2. pesha says:

    Thanks man, totally worked!! I bought my new Lenovo last week and I couldn’t get my wifi to work till now, you saved me a terrible headache!

  3. Mauro says:

    Worked on mine. I can enable the wireless, though I can not connect. Like it was a wrong password. Keeps me asking over and over.

  4. jenik says:

    Thanks a lot, after about 5 hours, I’m really glad, I’ve found your solution! –ThinkPad E520–

  5. […] Remember that post about wifi not working in Ubuntu on my Lenovo laptop? […]

  6. eero otsus says:

    Thank you so much!
    This solved WiFi on Lenovo 3000 V200 with Intel WiFi 4965. Crunchbang Linux based on Debian Wheezy.

  7. Stefan says:

    Perfect! That was the only reason i stayed with 10.10, now i can update. Worked perfectly on Lenovo 3000V200

  8. Philippe says:

    Perfect for me also. On a Lenovo 3000 V200.

  9. Paul says:

    Hi MIne says. Can not change this status…

    3: brcmwl-0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: yes

  10. Gex Mitnick says:

    thnx, this solution worked for me.

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