Dell Inspiron N7110 Wireless Driver not working

I've been trying to figure out how to get my wireless driver to work since I installed Linux a month ago because Windows was crapping out on me. I'm new to Linux, so I'm unfamiliar with how to get certain things to work. Any suggestions?

01:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation Centrino Wireless-N 1030 [8086:008a] (rev 34) Subsystem: Intel Corporation Centrino Wireless-N 1030 BGN [8086:5325] Kernel driver in use: iwlwifi
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03:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller [10ec:8136] (rev 05) Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:04d8] Kernel driver in use: r8169
*-network DISABLED description: Wireless interface product: Centrino Wireless-N 1030 vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0 logical name: wlan0 version: 34 serial: 4c:eb:42:77:d6:f2 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwlwifi driverversion=3.5.0-23-generic firmware=18.168.6.1 latency=0 link=no multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bgn resources: irq:51 memory:d0600000-d0601fff *-network description: Ethernet interface product: RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0 logical name: eth0 version: 05 serial: 84:8f:69:d2:db:a4 size: 100Mbit/s capacity: 100Mbit/s width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix vpd bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd autonegotiation configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=r8169 driverversion=2.3LK-NAPI duplex=full firmware=rtl_nic/rtl8105e-1.fw ip=192.168.1.73 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=MII speed=100Mbit/s resources: irq:49 ioport:2000(size=256) memory:d0404000-d0404fff memory:d0400000-d0403fff

2 Answers

This had worked for me, but haven't figured out yet how to make it permanent.

Open terminal with Ctrl+Alt+T and type the following commands:

sudo rmmod -f iwlwifi 

It may ask you to input your password after you press enter

sudo modprobe iwlwifi 11n_disable=1

The above will disable the N mode on your wireless card and it should start working.

I realize this is an old question, but I just ran into this issue and it took some time to find an answer that worked. For me, I needed to go into the BIOS under "Advanced" settings and toggle "Function Key Behavior" to be "Function Key" instead of "Multimedia Key".

Then, when I was back in Linux I could use Fn-F2 to toggle on the wireless network interface. (This is the hardware switch.) At that point everything worked automatically.