Ubuntu – Wifi networks lost after updating

I am a total newbie with Ubuntu, so please bear with me, thanks!
And also I apologize if the question is too long, but I just wanted to be clear about what is happening.

I got a hold of a Toshiba Satellite S855-S5378 with 750GB disk, 8GB ram and a Realtek RTL8723AE Wi-Fi card and decided to go with Ubuntu 19.04.

The installation went smooth, it detected my home Wi-Fi network, connected to it, downloaded updates on the fly, and after a while it finished and asked to reboot. I did reboot and after that, there was no internet connection. It seems that the Wi-Fi connection disappeared. I suppose that one of the updates messed up the Wi-Fi driver and now I have no connections at all.

If I go to the top right corner and click on it, it says "Wi-Fi not connected" and if I click "Select Network" there are no available networks shown to connect. During the main installation there were at least 15-20 networks (I live in a building) and it did connect because at that time it downloaded some additional software and updates.

I had no important files on the laptop, so I went and reinstalled Ubuntu again, and the behavior was exactly the same. After it finishes installing and reboot, I don't see any available networks.

Typed:

lshw -class network

and the card appears there with the following info:

description: Wireless interface

product RTL8723AE PCIe Wireless Network Adapter

vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., LTD.

physical id: 0

and some other information that I don't know if is relevant to include it here. So I know that the hardware is recognized, but is just not working.

• Am I doing something wrong?
• Can I download an updated driver for the Wi-Fi card?
• What else can I do to make it work?

Thanks for your help.

RPareja

Results of commands:

~$ lspci -nnk | grep 0280 -A3

02:00:0 Network controller [0280]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8723AE PCIe Wireless Network Adapter [10ec:8723]

Subsystem: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8723AE PCIe Wireless Network Adapter [10ec:0724]

Kernel driver in use: rtl8723ae

Kernel modules: rtl8723ae


~$ rfkill list all

0: TOshiba Bluetooth: Bluetooth

Soft blocked: no

Hard blocked: no

1: hc10: Bluetooth

Soft blocked: no

Hard blocked: no

2: phy0: Wireless LAN

Soft blocked: no

Hard blocked: no

sudo iwlist scan

enp1s0 Interface doesn't support scanning.

wlp2s0 No scan results

lo Interface doesn't support scanning.

dmesg | grep rtl

[12.412634] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: rtl: examining hci_ver=06 hci_rev=000b lmp_ver=06 lmp_subver=1200

[12.412636] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: rtl: loading rtl_bt/rtl8723a_fw.bin

[12.642649] rtl8723a Using firmware rtlwifi/rtl8723fw_b.bin

[12.665843] ieee802111 phy0: Selected rate control algorithm 'rtl_rc'

[12.666019] rtlwifi: rtlwifi: wireless switch is on

[12.763393] rtl8723ae 0000:02:00.0 wlp2s0: renamed from wlan0

no error or warnings after both commands, but the result for scan is the same as before:

sudo iwlist scan

enp1s0 Interface doesn't support scanning.

wlp2s0 No scan results

lo Interface doesn't support scanning.

what troubles me is that during the installation the wifi worked fine. 🙁