lost wifi on Intrepib

If this thread is a repeat I apologize, I looked through the many wifi threads but haven't found a solution to this problem I'm faced with. Basically I have an AAO with 80G HD and bios 3309 and have installed ubuntu intrepid ibex with madwifi drivers. It worked great for a few days but I lost all wifi capabilities 3 days ago now.

I've tried a lot fo tutorials on switching drivers, reinstalling network manager and even move the .gconf file but still no wifi.
when doing sudo lshw -C network I get (among other things) *-network DISABLED

I even tried removing the battery, holding the power button for 10 seconds, I tried the little wifi switch underneath on the right side but nothing seems to work.

I'm considering returning this computer to the store (I have 5 days left) but I really think it's a beauty if not for this annoying lack of connectivity.

Has anyone been able to solve this with ubuntu.

The things I haven't tried is installing another kernel or upgrading the bios (don't know how)

Oh and I even tried ndiswrapper for the windows driver.

I'm learning a lot but still haven't solved the issue.