Solving Wireless Disabled Problem in Ubuntu 10.10

I was experiencing problem enabling the wireless in HP DV6 and tried few solutions for it. Finally, I came with this small solution which might be useful for you too.

Follow the steps as follows:
- Turn on the wireless switch(it still looks like being turned off).

- Now you need to edit the NetworkManager.state file located at /var/lib/NetworkManager/.
So enter the following command in the terminal:

sudo gedit /var/lib/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.state

This will open the NetworkManager.state file in the text editor which will most probably look like below:

[main]
NetworkingEnabled=true
WirelessEnabled=false
WWANEnabled=true

Now, change the line WirelessEnabled=false line to true and save and close the text editor.

Now, we'll have to use rfkill command to view and unblock the wireless device. Note that the rfkill command is the tool to enable and disable wireless devices such as WiFi and bluetooth.

In the terminal, run the command rfkill list which will list the wireless devices, their identifier(numeric value like 0, 1) and the status of blocking at software and hardware level.

Now, pick up the identifier of the wifi(in my case, its 0 for hp-wifi) and just issue the command rfkill unblock 0 and then reboot the system.

This should solve the problem for you. If not, drop your comment here and I'll try to find the best solution for you.