Problems with Qualcomm Atheros AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter on HP ProBook 4330s on Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS

• Hardware is HP ProBook 4330s
• Software is Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS

A few days ago all of sudden WiFi adapter stopped working.

The Settings UI says "No Wi-Fi Adapter Found"

Some CLIs say

chuck@jones:~$ lspci -knn | grep Net -A3; rfkill list
24:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Qualcomm Atheros AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) [168c:002b] (rev 01) Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) [103c:1461] Kernel driver in use: ath9k Kernel modules: ath9k
25:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller [10ec:8168] (rev 06)
0: phy0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: yes
1: hp-wifi: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: yes
2: hp-bluetooth: Bluetooth Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: yes
3: hci0: Bluetooth Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no
chuck@jones:~$ sudo lshw -C network
[sudo] password for chuck: *-network DISABLED description: Wireless interface product: AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) vendor: Qualcomm Atheros physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:24:00.0 logical name: wlo1 version: 01 serial: 74:e5:43:bc:ff:06 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless configuration: broadcast=yes driver=ath9k driverversion=4.15.0-64-generic firmware=N/A latency=0 link=no multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11 resources: irq:19 memory:d4700000-d470ffff
chuck@jones:~$ uname -a
Linux jones 4.15.0-64-generic #73-Ubuntu SMP Thu Sep 12 13:16:13 UTC 2019 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
chuck@jones:~$ iwconfig
wlo1 IEEE 802.11 ESSID:off/any Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=off Retry short limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Power Management:off

Could it be the related to latest Ubuntu software updates? or a possible crash of old hardware? How does one troubleshoot such question?

1 Answer

Your adapter is blocked by rfkill. On HP laptops this happens. These are the steps to fix it:

1. Make sure there is no hardware wireless switch on your laptop and turn it on if it exists.

2. Check BIOS for wireless options and enable it. Try to reset BIOS to defaults if you don't have a wireless option.

3. If nothing helps, blacklist the HP platform driver by running in a terminal:

   sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-hp.conf <<< "blacklist hp_wmi"

and reboot.