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Forum Discussion
Random internet disconnects
Since around September of last year, I've have been experiencing random internet disconnects. The disconnects don't seem to have any sort of pattern to them, they just happen whenever they so please. Today I finally decieded to try and solve it, and obviously my first guess was a driver update. When I looked up the drivers, I found the latest version to be 10.0.0.39. I downloaded the ZIP and installed the drivers + netgear genie. I've restarted my PC and haven't noticed any changes, infact it seems the disconnects are now more frequent.
I don't know if I didn't install the drivers properly, my device manager says that the driver version is: 5.1.35.0 by MediaTek Inc.
I'm assuming that I didn't install the drivers properly, but I even tried uninstalling the MediaTek drivers and rebooting, only to have them reinstalled and the disconnects to persist.
Any ideas on how to stop these disconnects / fix my driver issue?
1 Reply
Hi I have the same model of adapter, and I started getting the same kind of issues as you describe when I was forced by Microsoft to update to the 1903 update to Windows 10.
After much frustration and gnashing of teeth, I found that if I completely uninstalled the adapter and all the Netgear drivers and software then reinstalled by simply fully shutting down and restarting the computer - you must switch off "fast boot" to get Windows to properly shut down, otherwise it just writes its current state to disk and reloads it, which is emphatically not what you want - then inserting the adapter and allowing Windows to select an appropriate driver, then everything appears to work fine. I ended up on driver version 5.1.22.0, provided by Microsoft. My adapter is now described as "802.11ac Wireless LAN Card", which is fine by me :)
You say you are still on 5.1.35.0. This could very well be your problem. If you do the steps I mention above, you should be able to get on version 5.1.22.0 like me, which appears to be good. If after uninstalling the Netgear software you are still on 5.1.35.0, try uninstalling the adapter from Device Manager. Windows should ask whether you want to delete the driver, answer "YES". Then remove the adapter, reboot with Fast Boot turned off and plug your adapter back in. Windows should automatically install it with 5.1.22.0, which should fix the issue if it is the same as mine.
Some of these steps may be unnecessary - I'm just a persistent user, not a Windows guru - but with any luck it'll get you back on line. Good luck! Let us know how it turns out.