Comment 46 for bug 1049466

Following the lead of David Samuels (#31 above), I installed Kernel 3.8, and then installed the firmware downloaded from kernel.org (as described in #8). My wireless is now working. However, the very odd thing is that it seemed to take some time for this solution to take effect. Immediately after following the above steps, wireless did not work and my network menu said 'device not ready', as others have reported. I spent the next hour or so trying to fix this, rebooting several times in the process, but to no avail. I gave up and went to bed. But this morning, when I logged in, the wireless was suddenly alive! (I guess David had a similar experience, since he reports needing to reboot twice.)

My current situation seems very similar to what David describes above (I think we have similar computers -- mine is an HP Pavilion dm1 4400). In particular, bluetooth is absent. Perhaps more firmware is needed?

Anyway, thanks to David and others for their comments on this forum. They have been very helpful.