Swapping the hdd’s back and quickly re-enabling wifi would be the simplest option.
because it is designed in windows to do the task.
there are so many possible variants stemming from BIOS controlled, Hidden BIOS settings accessible from a Special Windows program, and even trial and error workarounds to re-enable.
Once re-enabled you can switch back the hdd’s and proceed with 1 less obstacle should you still run into problems.
I have the same wireless card in my minilaptop (Acer 753). During boot and in the boot loader the WiFi LED is off. Even when I log into KDE in openSUSE-11.3 it’s still off.
But when I enable wireless in knetworkmanager applet in the panel (Right-click -> Enable wireless) then WiFi LED turns on and and after a while can see wireless networks around and I can connect to them.
So don’t worry, the WiFi adapter can be enabled from application, you don’t have to use Fn + Fx keys at all…
BTW you will need extra (binary) drivers from Packman repository for this particular card, see my description for Acer Aspire One 753 in Acer Laptops hardware list.
But there will be an open-source driver for it soon available, so hopefully in 11.4 it should work out of box…
Might be quite late for this update, but hope it helps some poor sod who went and brought an acer aspire one netbook and pressed Fn+<Wifi> to switch wifi off, to see if his wife’s htc legend android would share its internet with opensuse!
To fix, what i did was Right Click network manager on system tray (where you should see Enable wireless unchecked and greyed out, Enable Networking checked and available to change) -> uncheck the Enable networking option (knetworkmanager went into a frenzy of a million notification pop ups saying network manager is disabled).
As it throws the message, restart your laptop. When you relogin, relaunch knetworkmanager from the konsole if its not in your system tray. After you see it in your system tray, you should see
enable wireless is unchecked and not greyed out anymore. Hence available to check.
Check to enable Wireless and Enable network… and enable Enable Networking afterwards and your wifi led would start blinking again! And stay off that Fn+Wifi key!
And this is from openSuse 11.4 + Acer Aspire One with atheros wifi chipset
I haven’t tried this in 11.4. With 11.3, I used FnF2 in Windows. Then, when I booted into openSuSE, I couldn’t get WiFi to work. I had to boot back to Windows.
I since discovered that FnF2 in openSuSE would have worked too. But, as I recall, that left the WiFi soft-blocked. So I either had to use the “enable wireless” on the knetworkmanager applet, or use “rfkill unblock all” to get it working. And you will need to install “rfkill” before you can do that.
I have an older laptop (2004 vintage) that is near its end-of-life. It has an external switch for WiFi. So I also tested with that (in 11.3). I turned off the switch in Windows, and that disconnected me from WiFi. Then I booted into linux. And knetworkmanager went right ahead and connected me to WiFi, completely ignoring the switch. So a lot probably depends on how the WiFi on/off switching is integrated into the system.
Am just a new user, but what I believe is that this is just a simple keyboard mapping issue. Because, when i ran dmesg after I pressed the Fn+Wifi key (to reactivate the interface), i saw messages like unknown key pressed. Should be a simple fix.
