I realized that I misunderstood the problem; it is not the network adapter that is off, it is wireless in general that is disabled. When I connect a usb wifi adapter, it still requires me to push the keyboard button for it to work (the notification applet says "wireless disabled" until I do). the internal uses wlan4 and iwlagn driver, the usb uses wlan3 and the zd1211rw driver.
I realized that I misunderstood the problem; it is not the network adapter that is off, it is wireless in general that is disabled. When I connect a usb wifi adapter, it still requires me to push the keyboard button for it to work (the notification applet says "wireless disabled" until I do). the internal uses wlan4 and iwlagn driver, the usb uses wlan3 and the zd1211rw driver.