Question Troubleshooting: TP-LINK TL-WN881ND Device Could Not Start

[endtrax_zero]

Been having an issue with my Wifi Adapter whereby it will consistently disconnect me from my WiFi network without warning. Attempts to reconnect to the Network will result in a "Cannot Connect To Network" error, and the only remedy would be to reset the device via Troubleshooter.

However, this is only effective momentarily as the above solution will eventually fail, with the device being noted as "Device Could Not Start" in the Device Manager, whereby the only option is to restart the PC.

Can anyone advise on troubleshooting and resolving the issue ?

Thank You

 

[bill001g]

Could be a driver issue. Maybe microsoft was being "helpful" 🙁 and upgraded the driver. Many times the generic microsoft windows drivers do not work as well as the ones from the vendor.

The big issue I see is that is a extremely old card. It likely means no new drivers have been out for a while. I suspect there are window 10 drivers but that card came out well before windows 10. Hopefully you can still find drivers on tplink site.

Unfortunately my prediction is this will make no difference. The error you are getting tends to be a hardware issue. This is even more true if this was running fine and then just started to do this.

I guess the good news is wifi nic cards are fairly inexpensive. To a point it also depends on how old your router is. If the router also only support 802.11n (this is now called wifi4) a newer card will not run any faster. The strange issue is if you attempt to buy a older generation wifi card you will pay more than the new ones. Luckily the new cards will work with older routers.

Although there are many choices and most will work fine I would recommend you look for a wifi6e card. Not so much because you need wifi6e but because there is almost no difference in the price between that and wifi5 or wifi 6 cards. Wifi7 is still a bit more expensive and only runs on windows 11.

A very popular chipset is intel ax210. If you search for that you should find cards that will work. You can search for wifi6e if you like also. The other vendor chipset are very stable and have been on the market for a few years now so you do not see the issue you did when stuff first comes onto the market.