I have this Toshiba Satellite laptop (P855-33D) that has inexplicably switched off the wireless card and I cannot find a way to turn it on again.
It all started when I attempted to change the wireless card: one of the cables took apart the pin from the card (it is a used laptop, I have no idea how this happened), so I had to mount in another one, but it never worked. The computer has Windows 10 as its main OS, and the menu that opens with the Wi-Fi icon in the appbar says that Wi-Fi is off, and gives a menu to auto reenable it after a given time. The button in the same menu to turn on Wi-Fi goes grey after 1 click.
I have found a lot of similar posts across the web, but nothing helped. The obvious keyboard combo (fn+F12 on this laptop) has no effects. I have flashed an updated BIOS and reset settings to default. I have tried unplugging the AC adapter, the main battery and the BIOS battery (I actually had to unsolder it), pressing the power button for 30sec., and restarting, but it didn't help. Every setting and diagnostic in Windows is pretty useless (although I did not know how to launch the diagnostic tool as an admin - this worked for one person).
rfkill list
in Linux (Ubuntu live cd) says that the device is hard-blocked, so obviously rfkill unblock all
doesn't help. Ubuntu disables also the USB connected Wi-Fi dongle for the same reason, even if rfkill
says it is not blocked. If I remove the Wi-Fi card, the USB dongle connects fine.
Since the previous card was broken by one of the cables, I tried using the cables from an other laptop, but it behaves the same way. I have also tried another Wi-Fi card, an older 802.11 b/g (both are Broadcom, the broken one is a Realtek). I tried updating/reinstalling drivers, but given its behavior under Linux I am pretty sure that it won't help. The laptop was bought used without an OS, so Windows has no OEM bloat/software. I am mentioning this because one person managed to get it working by running a little program saved in the Toshiba directory of his Windows install. One of the hinges is broken (mentioning this because of these comments, I have no idea of how this should influence the computer operation, the laptop has worked fine for years). The BIOS does not have a setting to enable Wi-Fi, and I am pretty sure that there is not an actual physical switch like on other Toshiba laptops (I have even downloaded the manual to be sure).
I have probably tried other things too, which I can't recall at the moment. I just don't know what else to try, so I am asking here as a last resort. Hope someone can help, I appreciate it.