USB WiFi adapters in conflict?

[Crimliar]

Short of physically removing the Realtek hardware you'll not manage to remover the drivers.  What you actually need to do is to disable the device:

Control Panel > Network and Sharing Centre > Change Adapter Settings (left hand menu)

On the page you can then right click on the adapter and disable it!

*I suspect this will fix your issue!

[pidgeonpost]

Thanks. I'll have a look later, but the Realtek adapter was physically removed and replaced with the Tplink one a while back. I've been around the loop of disabling and uninstalling the Realtek device a number of times via the software and it appears to have worked, i.e. ipconfig /all shows no WiFi adapter. I then run the TPlink install which installs cleanly and works fine - until the Realtek one gatecrashes the party again.

I could forget using WiFi at all on this system as enet is an easy option, but as an (ex) Windows Systems Manager it's really bugging me that I can't resolve this seemingly basic problem 😅.

This system isn't fully set up yet and I'm seriously considering reinstalling W11, this time making sure I have the correct adapter plugged in before I start! 

[Crimliar]

It's likely that the TP-Link adapter uses a Realtek chipset.  Would it be possible to remove the physical device - so there is no physical WiFi device in the system at all.  Then connect the computer to the router using a cable, before reinstalling the WiFi device and just letting your OS load the (probably Realtek) device drivers.

[pidgeonpost]

Thanks for that. You may be right about the Realtek chipset (see below), but it's not something I know much about. This is what I did a couple of days ago.

• Disabled then Uninstalled the Realtek adapter, selected option to uninstall drivers.
• Installed the Tplink adapter and ensured that it showed in Computer Management. 
• Selected Reset, and as soon as the process began I physically removed the TPLink adapter.
• On completion of the Reset no WiFi adapter was shown. 
• I ran the TPLink installation again and so far 🤞 there have been no spontaneous reincarnations of the Realtek drivers. 

Having said that, I'm not using WiFi yet as I haven't the time to get drawn into more troubleshooting at the moment. 

What makes me wonder about the Realtek involvement is that of the 4 TPLink driver files installed, one is named 'rtwlanu.sys'. Google tells me this is a Realtek driver file. It's also been linked to BSOD it seems. 

Once the Christmas and New Year stuff calms down I can get on the case again. Thanks for your interest. 

[WSH]

The first thing to do is check with TP-Link’s website that you have the latest drivers.  The ones that came with the device are often out of date before they leave the factory.  (My apologies if you’ve already done that).

Incidentally, if you go to remove the Realtek driver again and it won’t let you it’s because the driver is in use.  If you go into services and stop it, you should be able to remove it then.

[pidgeonpost]

Thanks. I can't remember the exact route I took to select this driver, but it's the one which seemed most likely on their website. From memory, there were 3 on offer and I think one was a non-starter for some reason so I just chose what I thought was the latest. Again from memory, I think the website refers to a version of the adapter which is a suffix to the model number. My model number is TL-WN725N, and I think version number should follow the final 'N'. As you can see from the pic there isn't one. But...for now it's working as it should. I'm not going to explore how well the two systems now coexist on WiFi as ultimately the later one will be the only one.

Thanks too for the tip on stopping the service - I'd entirely forgotten that option. 

Well I'll leave it at that for now and see how WiFi performs. I'm still not sure I'm out of the woods as far as BT is concerned but it was pointless pursuing things further until I know my own kit is behaving itself. 

Thanks all. 👍😊