After update wireless no longer enabled

[Tom]

I just installed LMDE on my HP dv6-1216sa and initially the blue touch button for the wireless was lit, and responded to touch (i.e. enable and disable wifi). I ran an update, turned it off, and then at the next boot the light for the wireless was orange (off) and would not turn it on. The wireless card still works in Win 7 so its not a coincidental failure. Here are a few dumps of data that may be helpful:

lspci -k0
8:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)
 Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 3040
 Kernel driver in use: ath9k

ifconfig
//Lists Ethernet and loopback but not wlan0 unless specified

ifconfig wlan0 up
SIOCSIFFLAGS: Unknown error 132

iwconfig wlan0
wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:off/any
          Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=off
          Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:on

rfkill list 0
0: phy0: Wireless LAN
 Soft blocked: no
 Hard blocked: yes
//Running rfkill unblock 0 doesn't remove the hardware block.

Here is the result in dmesg whenever I push the wireless touchbutton:
[ 1480.522340] atkbd.c: Unknown key released (translated set 2, code 0x94 on isa0060/serio0).
[ 1480.522359] atkbd.c: Use 'setkeycodes e014 <keycode>' to make it known.

The network applet docked in the bototm right shows the wireless as disbaled by hardware. Anyone got any ideas other than a fresh install and not updating (not ideal)?