Wifi suddenly not working on laptop? (Not able to see any wifi connections)

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Hello, this is my first time posting here on the Manjaro forum. My laptop had been running pretty awesomely and without much issue on Manjaro XFCE for the past several months, but yesterday, out of the blue, it just suddenly stopped being able to see any wifi networks. Meanwhile, my other computer and my phone can use the wifi just fine.

Here’s my output from inxi -F:


System:    Host: nonplussed-inspiron3521 Kernel: 5.10.53-1-MANJARO x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: Xfce 4.16.0 Distro: Manjaro Linux 
Machine:   Type: Portable System: Dell product: Inspiron 3521 v: A12 serial: <superuser required> 
           Mobo: Dell model: 0FXP6Y v: A00 serial: <superuser required> UEFI: Dell v: A12 date: 10/25/2013 
Battery:   ID-1: BAT1 charge: 11.2 Wh (56.3%) condition: 19.9/41.4 Wh (48.1%) volts: 15.2 min: 14.8 
CPU:       Info: Dual Core model: Intel Pentium 2127U bits: 64 type: MCP cache: L2: 2 MiB 
           Speed: 798 MHz min/max: 800/1900 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 798 2: 798 
Graphics:  Device-1: Intel 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics driver: i915 v: kernel 
           Device-2: Suyin Integrated_Webcam_HD type: USB driver: uvcvideo 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.11 driver: loaded: intel unloaded: modesetting resolution: 1366x768~60Hz 
           OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel HD Graphics 2500 (IVB GT1) v: 4.2 Mesa 21.1.5 
Audio:     Device-1: Intel 7 Series/C216 Family High Definition Audio driver: snd_hda_intel 
           Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.10.53-1-MANJARO running: yes 
           Sound Server-2: PulseAudio v: 14.2 running: yes 
Network:   Device-1: Realtek RTL810xE PCI Express Fast Ethernet driver: r8169 
           IF: enp1s0 state: down mac: ec:f4:bb:94:0d:5a 
           Device-2: Broadcom BCM43142 802.11b/g/n driver: wl 
           IF: wlp2s0 state: dormant mac: 16:5a:e1:1b:2b:01 
           IF-ID-1: enp0s20u3c4i2 state: up speed: N/A duplex: N/A mac: 1a:55:e3:29:4f:f5 
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 465.76 GiB used: 10.25 GiB (2.2%) 
           ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Toshiba model: MQ01ABF050 size: 465.76 GiB 
Partition: ID-1: / size: 343.34 GiB used: 10.23 GiB (3.0%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda8 
           ID-2: /boot/efi size: 496 MiB used: 26 MiB (5.2%) fs: vfat dev: /dev/sda1 
Swap:      Alert: No swap data was found. 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 43.0 C mobo: N/A 
           Fan Speeds (RPM): cpu: 0 
Info:      Processes: 170 Uptime: 39m Memory: 3.72 GiB used: 1.76 GiB (47.2%) Shell: Bash inxi: 3.3.06

It says that network Device-1 is down, so that seems to be the issue most likely. Could anyone give me some pointers on what I could do about this?

(It may be that there’s already other posts on this forum with this exact problem and the exact solution I need; if that’s the case I apologize, and I should search harder.)

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Did you look at the wiki for Broadcom devices? Broadcom wireless - ArchWiki

It’s your Device-2, the first one is ethernet/cable. Did your reboot after the latest updates?

1 Like
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Oh, I didn’t know that part of the wiki existed. I’ll have to read up on it, thanks for pointing me there

I thought I did try rebooting/restarting it, but I’ll try shutting it down too just too be sure.

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I’ve been looking through the wiki page a bit, but I feel pretty out of my depth. Not sure what to do, and on some other threads I’ve also read that it seems the BCM43142 isn’t very compatible with Manjaro, so I wonder if I should even try installing another distro on the laptop. It’d be a bit of a shame to since I’ve just been liking Manjaro quite a lot

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Usually, this has nothing to do with any distribution. Either the driver is already in the kernel or there is a third-party module that provides the correct drivers.
For any arch-based distro this installation is in my experience always easier than any other distribution (mostly due to the AUR).

You could try to switch to the DKMS version of the driver: Arch Linux - broadcom-wl-dkms 6.30.223.271-28 (x86_64)

pamac install broadcom-wl-dkms