iwlwifi: Failed to start INIT ucode: -110

My desktop has lost wireless connectivity and I strongly suspect a hardware issue, but I would like to know how I can confirm that that is the problem before I buy a replacement. My reasons for thinking this are: - My NIC was a standard size, but I have a low profile case so, as a bodge, I cut the metal bracket. This worked fine, but it's never felt like it was seated properly, so may have died due to my own miserly stupidity - I use wicd-curses to connect to my network and it no longer detected any SSIDs. - running sudo ifconfig wlan0 up returns SIOCSIFFLAGS: Connection timed out - running iw dev shows my device details - running sudo ip link set wlan0 up returns RTNETLINK answers: Connection timed out - dmesg gives: iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Failed to load firmware chunk! iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Could not load the uCode section iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Failed to start INIT ucode: -110 iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Failed to run INIT ucode: -110 I've exhausted my limited knowledge and Google searching from my phone isn't leading me anywhere. I'm really not familiar with this stuff, so any background info to help me understand what's going on here is very much appreciated! OS: Xubuntu 16.04 (relatively recently upgraded from 14.04) Kernel: 4.4.0-47 **Edit:** I found the solution to my lost connectivity, but I still don't know ***why***. I am therefore leaving this question here in the hope that someone can answer my original question: **how can I debug this kind of problem?**