Question Intel Dual Band Wireless-ac 3168NGW not detected.

[tek3195]

I have an ASUS B365M-A that on which I've installed an M.2 wifi card via m.2 to PCIe x1 adapter but it is not detected in Linux or Windows 10. There was one spot that it showed up in Windows in Revo Uninstaller under windows tools I saw Intel dual band-ac 3168, but it does not show in Device Manager & Linux makes no mention of it anywhere. I ran tail command on /var/log/syslog and /var/log/dmesg while plugging card in and it only showed the usb-bluetooth, no wifi at all.

I don't have any way of checking the components that I am aware of, so I don't know if it is a problem with the Intel card, the M.2 to PCIe adapter or the motherboard.
I have no idea which direction to go. Can someone direct me on how to go about solving this ?

adapter: m.2 adapter
card: wifi card

EDIT: It's the motherboard. Changed it from full-height to half-height card and installed it in an old SFF Dell Optiplex and wifi works fine. Now I have to find out if it is hardware or software on the motherboard stopping it from working on the Asus mobo ?

 

[vov4ik_il]

Might be the adapter too. Either can be bad/broken. Check this for keys etc...

 

[tek3195]

Might be the adapter too. Either can be bad/broken. Check this for keys etc...

It's in the motherboard I believe, or maybe processor ? I don't know what to do with it anymore. The card and adapter worked when I removed GPU and installed wifi in the x16 slot. It immediately started spitting out logs about iwlwifi, did that for a few minutes and leveled out with both network LEDs on adapter as well as the services working. I shut it down and moved wifi card from x16 to x1 slot and started it back up with everything working like it should. Shut down and installed GPU and restarted, all good. Upgraded kernel and after reboot it stopped working but was still detected. Rebooted again and no longer detected. Rolled back kernel to previous version, still not detected, no mention of it that I have found. ASUS support didn't have any answers after trying to troubleshoot for a couple of hours. Then they abruptly stopped being helpful and said my card was not in the QVL for pcie network card vendors and I needed to buy one that was. By the way, there is a whopping total of four(4) cards on that list. I may be wrong, but I don't think that would work anyway. From what very little I understand on it, the wifi module doesn't really give two craps where it is plugged in and has the same output whether in an x1 or x16 slot. I have the logs saved but they are freakin huge and the people that should really want to see them have no interest in them. I would think that somebody, who is drawing a paycheck from ASUS, would have viewing or even requesting those logs as part of their job description. I guess there are slackers everywhere.

 

[vov4ik_il]

Add linux logs, not working for Asus, just curious.
You did not hot-plug pcie devices, did you?
QVL exists for firmware support, they cannot buy every device on the market and try so they list what they did try and agreed to support.
P.S. The card indeed does not care where you plug it

 

[tek3195]

Add linux logs, not working for Asus, just curious.
You did not hot-plug pcie devices, did you?
QVL exists for firmware support, they cannot buy every device on the market and try so they list what they did try and agreed to support.
P.S. The card indeed does not care where you plug it

I understand that they cannot test every device on the market. I also know that way more than the 4 on their list will work and would expect a mainstream card to have a better chance than the no-name cards. It just doesn't sound right to hear a motherboard with Intel chipset and Intel processor won't support Intel wireless card. I guess that's from associating support with compatibility which are completely different. Coming from a mechanical background it is harder for me to differentiate between compat and support.

With supported being more akin to tested, an unsupported card that's not detected in x1 slot should not be detected in x16 and change whatever it changed from there to work in x1 slot. The card didn't change, only where the motherboard was reading it from changed. Seems to me that if its not detected here, is detected there, changes to detected here and there and changes again to detected nowhere, it would be a fault in the motherboard. That really shouldn't matter if they tested the card or not, since the card has same output not caring where it is plugged in. Again, that's the way it seems to me, I could be looking at it completely wrong.

After days of trying to get it working, yes I hot plugged it one time to run tail on /var/log files looking for changes in output. There were no changes at that time. That was well before I got it working in x16 slot and was done days after it initially not working. So I don't think it caused any problems. At least I hope not. That came from cross-reading Ubuntu wireless troubleshooter guide and testing PCIe with instructions for PCMCIA device at bottom of same page. It began working well after that so I hope it's ok, think it is. Here are the logs from that time frame there are two logs covering 5 days from kern.log.1 and syslog.1.

 

[vov4ik_il]

Log link expired.
Hotplugging PCIe you are asking for trouble - you can instantly kill a lane or two beyond recovery.

 

[tek3195]

Log link expired.
Hotplugging PCIe you are asking for trouble - you can instantly kill a lane or two beyond recovery.

maybe this one will work.
yeah,read up on it some since. I didn't want to do that, just got crossed up between guides.