Wireless nightmare - ipw2200

[Kihara Muriithi]

Hi pals,

I have a laptop that I have been using for a long time - 2 years - a
Toshiba satellite Pro. I haven't had a reason to complain until now. I
have been using an ethernet cable all along, but I am in a situation
where I seriously need wireless connection. This have proved to be not
that easy.

The card the laptop have is ipw2200 from Intel. I have the necessary
driver and firmware, according to the numerous web pages I have come
across. The OS even does see it, but it wouldn't work. I have searched
the net for a couple of days, but don't have a solution yet. Here is
what I have:

dmesg info:
[root at kerberos kihara]# dmesg | grep ipw
ipw2200: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200/2915 Network Driver, 1.2.0kmprq
ipw2200: Copyright(c) 2003-2006 Intel Corporation
ipw2200: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection
ipw2200: Radio Frequency Kill Switch is On:
ipw2200: Detected geography ZZM (11 802.11bg channels, 0 802.11a channels)

iwconfig
          radio off  ESSID:off/any
          Mode:Managed  Channel:0  Access Point: Not-Associated
          Bit Rate:0 kb/s   Tx-Power=off   Sensitivity=8/0
          Retry limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

[root at kerberos kihara]# dmesg | grep eth1
eth1: RealTek RTL8139 at 0xf8a86000, 00:0f:b0:9a:5c:47, IRQ 23
eth1:  Identified 8139 chip type 'RTL-8100B/8139D'

The issue seem to be this line 'ipw2200: Radio Frequency Kill Switch is On:'
I am at a loss how to fix it. I have looked at the bios and they don't
have anything that could help. I have a feeling re-installing might
not help also. See, I have tried using live ubuntu and hit the same
snag, the kill switch. What am I missing? Would there be someone here
who have came across this problem and has a fix? I would be very
grateful for any help.

Thanks
William
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists