Q4OS Forum

Faiskan

Member

Registered: 2025-06-16

Posts: 1

Can't enable Wireless

My friend has a really old PC and he needed it just to study, so I installed Q4OS for him and configured the wi-fi connection. He used it for almost 6 month (I believe) and them call me again because his wi-fi was not working anymore. So I checked and the wireless seen to be disable, I tried to enable it by the 'Disable Connection > Enable Wireless' but it simply don't work, nothing happens. I tried to search some solution on the forums using the 'rfkill list' but nothing seens to work:

0: phy0: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: yes

Distro: Trinity R14.1.1 - Q4OS 5.4.1-n1
Network1: Ralink RT3090 Wireless 802.11n 1T/1R PCIe | driver: rt2800pci
Network2: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet | driver: r8169

(I am writing the command result by hand because he doesn't have a ethernet connection, I will retrieve the PC to my house to further inspection)

P.S: Sorry for the grammars errors by advance, english is not my first language.

Thanks for reading!

crosscourt

Member

From: Wash DC

Registered: 2017-05-07

Posts: 2,510

Re: Can't enable Wireless

You didnt mention what hardware your friend is using?  Hard blocked yes means its being blocked by hardware. If its a laptop there may be a switch(could be an F key) or a setting in the bios that needs to be enabled. Considering it worked for 6 months ,it has to be something recent thats hardware related. Was any work done on the hardware that may have disturbed the wifi card or its wired connections?

My advice, if its a laptop take out the battery and remove the ac cord for a few minutes to 5 minutes,then put them back and try it again.

Last edited by crosscourt (2025-06-17 01:58)

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Q4OS KDE 5.x-  Lenovo M73 Tiny  4th gen i5 Intel cpu, 16gb ram, 256gb ssd

hchiper

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2020-07-28

Posts: 640

Re: Can't enable Wireless

If there is a (small) switch to enable/disable WiFi, maybe your friend switched it inadvertently. Look carefully on the PC for such a switch, especially if it is a laptop.
Otherwise I should try this command: $ sudo rfkill unblock phy0

Edit:
See also https://www.q4os.org/forum/viewtopic.php?id=4698

Last edited by hchiper (2025-06-17 19:56)

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Q4OS machine: Samsung R519 - Pentium T4200 2.0 GHz - 4 GB RAM - 500 GB SSD