My vaio laptop has a wireless kill switch, if it is switched off and then start the system, there is no wireless detected even if I switch it on later, there is even not eth1 or wifi0 detected, I noticed Archlinux also has this problem, they both have kernel 2.6.25, however, Ubuntu Hardy (kernel 2.6.24) and OpenSUSE 10.3 does not have this problem, I can switch the wireless on after boot and the system just detects and scans wireless network.
Do you know what wireless chipset you have? If not,
/sbin/lspci -v
should tell you.
In yast network device config you have the option of starting your wlan on boot, when plugged or manually. For me the plugged option allows me to turn if off or on without problem, as if I was plugging or unplugging a network cable. It was originally set to ‘on boot’, so it wouldn’t restart automatically if switched off and then on.