[ubuntu-uk] Surprising Wi-Fi Problem Cure

[Nigel Verity]

Hi

I have an Acer laptop on which I run Xubuntu 18.04. Recently I've been having increasing problems with the wi-fi. At first it kept randomly dropping the connection, but allowed me to reconnect. The frequency of these dropouts increased and a few days ago it got to the point where not only could I not reconnect at all, the available wi-fi networks were not even being detected.

My assumption was a failing wi-fi adaptor. Having identified the type I went on to the Intel website only to find that support for it has been dropped (the laptop is a few years old). It did suggest, however, that combinations of the Fn and function keys might provide a hardware switch for the wi-fi, as might Ctrl + Alt plus a function key. Really it was clutching at straws but I tried it anyway, with little hope given that the instructions were aimed at Windows users.

To cut a long story short Ctrl + Alt + F1 took me instantly out of the GUI to a command line login prompt. After logging in I ran "startx" to fire up the GUI and that took me to the "first use" screen you get when installing Xfce - no task bar, menu or anything else pre-defined. Fearing I may have royally screwed up my user interface I did a hard shutdown with the power button and then rebooted. Up came the GUI exactly as I am used to seeing it, with wi-fi working fine and no dropouts since.

I've found nothing in either the Xubuntu or Acer documentation about this particular key combination but it's worked wonders. May just be worth others bearing in mind in case of wi-fi or, possibly, other driver issues.

Nige
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