Network manager shows the message "wireless is disabled by hardware switch" while three is no switch on the laptop to disable wireless.

below is the lshw output which might help to get to the solution

  $ sudo lshw -C network

  ...

  *-network DISABLED

       description: Wireless interface

       product: Centrino Advanced-N 6200

       vendor: Intel Corporation

       physical id: 0

       bus info: pci@0000:0a:00.0

       logical name: wlan0

       version: 35

       serial: 58:94:6b:14:25:c8

       width: 64 bits

       clock: 33MHz

       capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless

       configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwlagn driverversion=2.6.38-8-generic firmware=9.221.4.1 build 25532 latency=0 link=no multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11abgn

       resources: irq:41 memory:ead00000-ead01fff