I have a Dell Latitude e360 laptop (64-bit arch) that previously had 32-bit Windows 7 on it. Wireless worked beautifully on it. It has a slide button on the right side for manually turning the wireless card on/off.
Several months ago, I gutted the OS and switched this over to a 64-bit Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin) system. When I did this, my physical workstation had changed such that I no longer really needed wireless - instead I was at a desk and always had a wired connection.
I'm now back to working from home and this morning tried using wireless for the first time in months. I have other laptops (also Ubuntus) that see my wireless router and home LAN no problem. But this machine doesn't show any wireless networks. In fact when I go to Network Connections, the Wireless tab is disabled altogether. So I looked down and noticed that the blue "wireless LED" was not on. I slid the wireless button to both the on and off positions several times. Nothing.
The way I see it is that I either (somehow) busted my wireless card at some point in the last several months, and didn't notice it because I was always at a desk using a wired connection. Or, perhaps there's something at the system level that is preventing wireless from turning on? What's my next step here? Thanks in advance!