However, the internal card still doesn’t scan. Very weird.
Okay, what does the following report about your internal wireless hardware
/sbin/lspci -nnk
and does the network interface show up with
/sbin/ifconfig
If it is listed here, then maybe it is not enabled…
Have you got rkill installed? If not, install it, then run
/usr/sbin/rfkill list
to see if it is disable for some reason.