Comment 15 for bug 710738

@Dave:

I notice that in your RfKill.txt attachment the wirelss lan device is soft blocked. I also note that the following patch went into the kernel between your working and non-working versions:

  commit 466449cfe797b8a5d82d25d0e0e08426d8dfba19
  Author: Lee, Chun-Yi <email address hidden>
  Date: Mon Dec 13 10:02:41 2010 +0800

      acer-wmi: Initialize wlan/bluetooth/wwan rfkill software block state

So perhaps what's happened is that your firmware state indicates that wifi should be disabled, but prior to that patch the kernel wasn't checking the bios to get that state. Do you have a wifi hotkey on your machine? What happens if you press it?