2y ago

Wifi stopped showing in linux mint

Yesterday night I had a problem with a usb port and the touch pad not working, I restarted the system a few times and switched back and forth with windows (which is installed on a different drive), they didn't work even there.After a few restarts the usbport and the touch pad came back to life, but the wifi stopped working. When I type wifi in the terminal I get: wifi = none (no device)
This time the problem is only on linux though.

Where/What should I check?

System Info:

17 comments

I have the exact same issue atm. After a new Windows update, I have to disable Wifi on Windows for it to work on Linux. It sounds bizarre, but try disabling Wifi on Windows.
I'm not sure if this is exactly the same issue I had, but mine ended up being resolved by disabling fastboot on the Windows side. Near as I can figure when I "shutdown" from windows, fastboot prevented releasing control of the network adapter to Linux. Wifi would only work if I restarted from windows, or when fastboot got disabled.
- Son of a bitch. Instead of "turning shit the fuck off", is windows putting the wifi card into some sort of eternal WoL mode when it shuts down? And the wifi card isn't resetting at boot time (or honoring a reset command) to give the linux drivers a known starting state?
  
  I think that's the gist. But don't worry - windows will boot .5 seconds faster....
I had the same problem with a MSI GF65.
I had an Intel AX201, which is basically the same device as the intel killer wifi card on the GS65.
I battled with the issue for a very long time. It came from Windows and only from Windows. You have to disable fastboot and there is a way to shut it down "fully" which you have to do.
If that does not solve it your only way out of it is to reinstall Windows.
- I too have the Intel card because the killer one had shitty software, how do I shut down fastboot fully???
You can try booting into a live environment of Mint and checking to see if the WiFi works there. I found that booting into a live environment can fix the Wifi issue.
- it didn't work, but after a bit it started working again, pretty wild
  
  I always carry with me a USB live environment of Linux Mint with me, it's been a lifesaver in some situations when my wifi card stopped cooperating for whatever reason.
  Also good for showcasing Linux Mint to other people.
I've had issues like this (but with Bluetooth) resolved by unplugging the computer from the wall, and holding the power button for a few seconds to clear out the capacitors.
If it's a laptop that's a bit harder to do, but might be worth a consider.
I haven't gone so far as to figure out why this fix works, but it's happened a few times now and i can't deny results
- it's a laptop :(
Device-2: Intel Wireless-AC 9260 driver: iwlwifi v: kernel pcie: > speed: 5 GT/s lanes: 1 bus-ID: 3e:00.0 chip-ID: 8086:2526
So I assume this is not old info and the thing shows up in lspci?
wifi seems to be a shell script coming from tlp, maybe you can do:
sh -x /usr/bin/wifi
to figure out why it thinks you have no wifi. This gives you a trace of the commands that wifi actually runs.
Also, wifi should be managed by NetworkManager so you could look into that documentation and log files for that. Also look at kernel logs like dmesg maybe.
Also also, this could be hardware problem of course. Maybe it just needs to be fully powered off to reset. Have you tried removing the battery? If you cannot do that, there might be little hole at the bottom of the laptop, to stick a paper clip into, to completely power cycle the machine. Maybe that'll reset it.
- yeah it showed on lspci but not on rfkill. It reset by itself at a certain point, dunno how or why.
I would check for kernel logs from the iwlwifi driver. If there is nothing in dmesg about it failing, maybe see if newer firmware is available for your device?
rfkill?
- didn't register the wifi, after a few attempts with a live usb stick (where the same thing happened, so no fix there), I got back into the mint installation and it worked

17 comments