Laptop freezes when turning wireless on

[Paul Backhouse]

Hi,

I turned my wireless connection off in an attempt to keep the battery going for a bit longer.

Now when I try and turn it back (eg via network settings) on the screen freezes and I get no response from keyboard or mouse.

Attempting to restart wireless via commandline:

paulo@minty:~$ sudo ifconfig wlan0 up
SIOCSIFFLAGS: Operation not possible due to RF-kill
paulo@minty:~$ rfkill list
0: acer-wireless: Wireless LAN
 Soft blocked: no
 Hard blocked: no
1: phy0: Wireless LAN
 Soft blocked: no
 Hard blocked: no

I found a work around (thanks to http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1610829.html and http://pkadetiloye.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/ubuntu-wireless-disabled-siocsifflags.html)

sudo rm /dev/rfkill

After running this and rebooting the wireless can be enabled as normal.

Version: Nadia 14 Cinnamon 64bit.
Hardware: emachines (Acer) e732z.
To reproduce: Turn off Wireless with taskbar wireless connection, turn wireless back on.
What happened: Screen freezes. No response from keyboard or mouse.
What I expected: Wireless to reactivate and reconnect as normal.
Reproducability: Always.

[Paul Backhouse (paulbackhouse)]

Also had to...

$sudo rmmod acer_wmi

...today, otherwise it just kept reoccuring.