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Forum Discussion
Model A6210 (AC1200 USB Adapter) Install causes HP printer to fail
8/22/21 - I just recently tried to install the A6210 USB adapter on my HP 2000 Lap Top runnning Window 8.1. The PC has 8GB of RAM and it is 64 bit. All the USB ports are 2.0. The A6210 is supposed to...
Yes, the AC6210 works on the HP2000 after installed (that is not the issue) but, the install causes the printer to fail. As I said previously, the purpose of a device driver is to act as an interpreter between the app/OS and the hardware. The install of a new device should not corrupt the install of another working device. The device driver is not common between the two devices. The OS would only interoperate with the WIFI adapter and call the specific WIFI driver when it needs it and the same with the printer. So, since the drivers are both unique and used for different operations, it does not make sense that the printer device driver itself, is the issue.
mmills79 wrote:
Yes, the AC6210....
Had to chase around to see that we are really talking about the A6210, which claims to have drivers from Windows 10 down to Vista and XP.
This may well mean that the native drivers in Windows will support the adapter. Try it without adding any drivers from Netgear.
As you have fixed this with a new adapter – and one designed to work with current versions of Windows rather than one from the ark – you may not need to dig any deeper. But another factor that hasn't come up so far is the chipset drivers for your USB. These are the motherboard-level drivers that Windows rarely picks up when looking for updates. Motherboard makers have a habit of burying these drivers in the depths of their support sites. And PC makers may not even bother to get the updates.
The same warning applies to wifi and Ethernet drivers for motherboards.
I have not tried to simply plug and play the A62100.
Should I remove or disable the Linksys first?
I did not understand your comment "and one designed to work with current versions of Windows rather than one from the ark"
are you implying there is something ancient or not up to date with the Netgear driver/install?
Lastly, I went into device manager and checked all the USB drivers down to root hub. Windows tells me the drivers are up to date. Did I do this correctly or is there a better way to do this?
mmills79 wrote:
I did not understand your comment "and one designed to work with current versions of Windows rather than one from the ark"
are you implying there is something ancient or not up to date with the Netgear driver/install?
The A6210 is six or seven years old and was designed for older versions of Windows. I'd hope that something you bought today would be a bit more current.
By now the A6210 may be well behind the wifi technology that your router offers.
These USB adapters are low-end widgets that don't get, or even deserve, massive investment in keeping them up to date with whatever Windows throws at us. (Have you looked at the requirements for Windows 11 yet? Are you ready for TPM? Me neither, until I read about it.)
mmills79 wrote:
I have not tried to simply plug and play the A6210.
Should I remove or disable the Linksys first?
Your call. I wouldn't uninstall anything. Simply unplugging the Linksys and plugging in the A6210 should persuade Windows to install its "native" drivers.
mmills79 wrote:
Lastly, I went into device manager and checked all the USB drivers down to root hub. Windows tells me the drivers are up to date. Did I do this correctly or is there a better way to do this?
That is my point. Windows won't find these things.
The best way to do it is to find out who made the motherboard. The visit the support pages for that.
You can even dig deeper by finding out who made the various on-board chips and then seeing if they have updates. Graphics,audio, Ethernet, USB, wifi and so on come from one of the usual suspects. Most time these won't be any great deal, but sometimes they can be the difference between a working device and a crash.
When you roll your own PCs you get into the habit of checking these things.
I tried your experiment. I unplugged the Linksys AC1200 and simply plugged in the A6210.
Windows installed it and it worked (without running the Netgear install CD). I'm using it now.
Happily I can also report that the printer also still worked!!!
So, is the smoking gun, the Netgear driver for the A6210?
It seems so to me ......and that it is a reasonable next step for someone at Netgear to look into this.
I hope someone from Netgear is looking at this thread and noting this discussion.
It seems the installation software/driver for the A6210 is flawed.
The only other point I will make is that from a performance perspective, I did not see any advantage of the Netgear over the Linksys. They both had approximately the same through put. The Linksys AC1200 is $10 cheaper.
Does anybody have any experience with the Netgear Night Hawk adapter (AC1900)? Supposedly it is also backwards compatible with Win 8.1 & USB 2.0. Does it really have significantly improved throughput and overall performance (connectivity, range, etc)?