Wireless Card crashed and couldn't be fixed in Ubuntu (reboot into vista fixed it)

Bug #308855 reported by David Dean
12
This bug affects 2 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
linux (Ubuntu)
Expired
Low
Unassigned

Bug Description

Binary package hint: network-manager

I have a HP 530 Laptop, and earlier today my wireless card just stopped working in Ubuntu 8.10 and the 'Enable Wireless' option from right clicking the network connection area in the panel became grayed out. Clicking the wireless button on my laptop (which normally correctly enables/disables the wireless) would not work at this stage.

Because it seemed like this might be a hardware fault I booted into a copy of the Ubuntu 8.10 LiveCD (which I am fairly certain worked with this laptop) and the wireless card still didn't work. At this stage I strongly suspected a hardware fault.

So I then booted into the Vista installation software partition also on this laptop (as I figured the service technitions would probably want me to check if it worked in Vista). During the boot up processes of the vista installation software I noticed that the wireless light was now glowing, so I quit the installation before the EULA and rebooted into my normal partition where the wireless now worked.

So basically the bug is that some weird quirk killed my network card and Ubuntu didn't seem to be able to do anything about it, but the vista installation pre-setup did fixed the problem, so maybe Ubuntu should be doing that :)

I've reported this problem using ubuntu-bug so hopefully enough useful files should be attached, but please let me know if any other information might be useful.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.10
IfupdownConfig:
 auto lo
 iface lo inet loopback
Package: network-manager 0.7~~svn20081018t105859-0ubuntu1.8.10.1
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/home/username/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/opt/mingw32ce/bin:/usr/local/netpbm/bin
 LANG=en_AU.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: network-manager
Uname: Linux 2.6.27-9-generic i686

Revision history for this message
David Dean (ddean-ieee) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Guy Knickerbocker (ggknicker) wrote :

I've just had the essentially exact same experience. Sorry that I don't have any data to provide.
HP Laptop Pavilion DV5220us

Revision history for this message
Pedro Villavicencio (pedro) wrote :

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Unfortunately we can't fix it, because your description didn't include enough information. You may find it helpful to read "How to report bugs effectively" http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html. We'd be grateful if you would then provide a more complete description of the problem.
 We have instructions on debugging some types of problems. http://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingProcedures
At a minimum, we need:
1. the specific steps or actions you took that caused you to encounter the problem,
2. the behavior you expected, and
3. the behavior you actually encountered (in as much detail as possible).
Thanks!

Changed in network-manager (Ubuntu):
importance: Undecided → Low
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Pedro Villavicencio (pedro) wrote :

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to New. Thanks again!.

Changed in network-manager (Ubuntu):
status: Incomplete → Invalid
Anibal (elkan9)
Changed in network-manager (Ubuntu):
status: Invalid → New
Revision history for this message
David Dean (ddean-ieee) wrote :

I've just had this problem again in Ubuntu 10.04, but this time I no longer have the Vista partition to rescue me. If anyone has any ideas how I can fix this problem, please let me know.

Revision history for this message
David Dean (ddean-ieee) wrote :

As to what caused the problem, I'm not entirely sure. I tried to shutdown my laptop because a process (kacpid, I think) was running at very high cpu. However the shutdown itself seemed to stall after a few minutes so I power cycled the laptop. At this point the wireless card no longer works and doesn't appear to show in lspci any more.

Revision history for this message
David Dean (ddean-ieee) wrote :

Hmmm... it seems to have come good after I left the laptop turned off overnight and removed the battery before plugging it back in. I suspect it might be a firmware issue.

Revision history for this message
Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox) wrote :

Firmware issue and having to reboot to Windows indicates to me that it's most likely a kernel issue, reassigning to 'linux'.

affects: network-manager (Ubuntu) → linux (Ubuntu)
Revision history for this message
Jeremy Foshee (jeremyfoshee) wrote :

Hi David,

If you could also please test the latest upstream kernel available that would be great. It will allow additional upstream developers to examine the issue. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds . Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please remove the 'needs-upstream-testing' tag. This can be done by clicking on the yellow pencil icon next to the tag located at the bottom of the bug description and deleting the 'needs-upstream-testing' text. Please let us know your results.

Thanks in advance.

    [This is an automated message. Apologies if it has reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

tags: added: needs-upstream-testing
tags: added: kj-triage
Changed in linux (Ubuntu):
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

[Expired for linux (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

Changed in linux (Ubuntu):
status: Incomplete → Expired
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