Thanks for the tip. If it's in the bios that would explain why a fresh OS install wouldn't correct it. I'm in the process of a FULL fresh install this time instead of trying to cut corners so after this I'll see if it works. If not I'll definitely be going straight to where you told me in the BIOS.

I actually plugged it up pretty quickly after it happened, and my netbook had an orange light showing that it was really low, and not completely dead. The sudden shutdown could still damage that kind of stuff though.

A sudden shutdown can certainly damage any number of things. But this is actually rare. The damage would happen only when something is being written at the time. With luck, the state of the disk is either that of before any writes are done, or after all of them are done. The problems are when only some of them are done. In worse cases, they are not done in order, so it can come out inconsistent where consistency would have been maintained by writes in order. They can be done out of order when the order that would maintain consistency is not the order for optimal timing. Filesystems like ext4 focus on optimal timing, so it is plausible to see out of order writes. And worse, with ext4's adherence only to Posix requirements and not legacy methods, it is possible to actually lose a file that was merely being moved, or something similar to that (e.g. normally it links first then unlinks the old name, but the out of order writes would record the unlinked directory before recording the linked directory). The journal should have saved that, but it seems either not everything gets written to the journal or the journal itself is subject to the write order issue.

The real test of the OS in my book would have been the running the Ubuntu Live CD or similar, which lets you just enter your wireless access info and get online. This works for me in 10.10. You would have wanted to test it before the incident so you'd be confident it does work on yours, and that there is no driver issue in the Live CD copy. Then knowing that, if it fails afterwards, you know its something in the state of the machine (BIOS, damaged hardware, etc).

You should be able to remove the battery, at least when the machine is fully powered off, and not lose BIOS settings. Then you should be able to plug in the mains adapter and bring it up without battery. At least my brother's HP laptop can do that (completely dead battery). But from manufacturer to manufacturer or model to model I don't know if this is the case (I haven't actually tested this concept on my netbooks).

So, I'm sure you'll let us know the result of the OS reinstall and/or the BIOS change.

BTW, YOUR BIOS may have things in different locations.

Well nothing was being wrote on the drive when it died so that's a plus.

The OS install went really smooth, but nothing has changed as far as my wlan0 issue. Still not scanning. I have used the Ubuntu Live CD before and it worked flawlessly by just typing in my information. It doesn't now so it's starting to look like a more serious problem.

I looked all through my BIOS (which by the way, isn't very much) and I could't find anything about enabling/disabling wireless. I'm sure it's an on board chip so it would require re-soldering but maybe, just maybe, it's not and I can just plug it up.

I would've had this posted hours ago but I couldn't get on this site, then I had college.

Guys, I'm embarrassed... Everything I've gone through, all the effort y'all have put towards helping me, was simply fixed by Fn+F11(my key combination to turn on my wireless)... For whatever reason I assumed (and I also know why they say what they say about assuming now) that the key combination wouldn't work in Slackware because I thought that the keyboard wasn't mapped out correctly for this. Just for shits-n-giggles (and I was desperate enough) I tried it and I'll be damned if it didn't work. I appreciate everyone's help but the battle is finally won.

since this is a dead thread, before I maked it as solved I just wanted to see what the little icon showed up as when I posted using lynx instead of XP or Windows 7 like it shows far in the past.

Don't be too hard on yourself since you did say you toggled the Fn+F11 earlier in the thread. I wonder why that worked now and didn't work earlier? Anyway, congrats on figuring it out.

Could have been a case of double trouble. The wireless might have been configured off AND the original OS disabled it. Then when Fn+F11 enabled it, the OS didn't. He probably then did Fn+F11 again, disabling it, without knowing.

My Asus EeePC has a light for the wireless. If I disable it (Fn+F2 in this case), the light goes off (and the OS notices it happening if it was configured, and also tells me).

I wish mine had a light for wireless. It may light up if an actual transfer is taking place but I don't remember. I have tons of lights at the bottom but the emblem that shows what they are wore off a long time ago. I even have one for Bluetooth but there isn't a Bluetooth chip in the computer and when I use a usb dongle it doesn't show up either. I probably did do something like that though, turning it back off without realising. And or the OS recognizing it, it may have if I was in X but I stayed in the console. Does yours still say something if you don't start X?

My wireless state light comes on instantly on power-up, even before BIOS starts. I cannot turn in on/off with Fn+F2 in BIOS, but I can as soon as the Ubuntu splash screen comes up. I'll have to find out how to start Ubuntu sans-X to test that way.

In grub you just need to specify the run level at the end of the line where you select your kernel. So if you add the 3 to the end of it, it should boot into console mode. Actually the same approach works for LILO as well.