Hardware wifi switch is off on Lenovo L440

I'm an L2 helpdesk guy and I have a user whose Lenovo L440 will not connect to wifi. The wifi icon in the notification area shows a red X and the "tu wireless on" button is greyed out in the Mobility Center. When she presses F8, it shows that wifi is on. The adapter is enabled and "allow to tu off to save power" is unchecked. We've reinstalled Pro/Set Wireless, and tried to install the adapter driver from the Device Manager. When I uninstalled the device there, checking the "remove driver" checkbox, it did not find the driver in Windows Update and I had to install Pro/Set Wireless from the Intel website. I've reinstalled the Hotkey Features Integration package and the Power Management driver.

I've queried the software and hardware radio states using Managed Wifi and it shows that the hardware switch is off. Now, L440 does not have a hardware switch on the outside. The Windows troubleshooter is saying the same thing: check an exteal switch. Which there isn't.

So my question to the knowledgeable SuperUsers is: how is this possible?

The case is out of my hands now (local IT will be doing their magic), but I would like to understand what's happening because these tickets are relatively common. It's usually not as difficult to resolve them as here but we definitely do need more understanding of how this works.

I'm probably asking a lot but perhaps there is someone here who can explain how exactly Windows determines the value of PhyRadioState[0].dot11HardwareRadioState and how it can be off when no physical hardware switch is present. And I would simply appreciate any light shed on this.

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