Hello! I have recently acquired a secondhand HP 3115m notebook. It would be nice if I had WiFi working, since I can't really use it without that. On this particular notebook, the "hard" rfkill switch is actually the combination of Fn + F12 + a keyboard driver that doesn't officially exist for Linux. (Gee, thanks, HP )

At present, because that driver is missing, none of the "extra" hotkeys (vol up/dn/mute, wifi on/off, lcd contrast/brightness, etc) work at all.

At the advice of my local tech shop guy and Linux guru (who also gave me the laptop), I tried installing the "linux-firmware-nonfree" package from Ubuntu 16.04. That did not remedy the situation.

I would like to use this laptop with Mint 18.1 "Serena", which --for the purposes of discovering this mess and for installing, which I've not yet done-- I am running from a spare USB flash drive.

Can anyone offer advice or assistance? Thanks in advance...

Planning to return the system tomorrow noonish (Eastern US time), if I don't have it going by then... a laptop with no WiFi is of no use to me.

In the absence of assistance, I have no choice but to return the laptop.

Thanks for nothing, folks!

Hi...

Please understand this is an all volunteer forum, no one is receiving any compensation nor is anyone obligated to answer your question. Folks answer if they have the time and enough knowledge to help you with your issue.

Have you checked the BIOS to see the status of the adapter, to see if it's enabled? If so, try resetting the BIOS to the original default settings and see if that helps.

Another option would be to purchase a USB adapter that Linux supports out of the box. Here is one such adapter. The USA listing is here.

Regards...