WIFI works on Linux, but not on Windows

Hey folks!

First, my apologies if this forum isn't the place for such thread, but I'm kinda running out of options.

So the problem is that, a few months ago, my wifi stopped working under Windows 10, but kept working under Linux (any distro).

What I've tried so far:

* Uninstalling the drivers (from Device Manager) and restarting;
* Installing the Atheros driver from the correct driver webpage;
* Disabling and enabling the device from Device Manager;
* Enabling/disabling the WLAN Autoconfig service;
* Pressing Fn+F3 which is supposed to be the combo for enabling/disabling WIFI via the keyboard;
* Disabled the "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" on the adapter properties;
* Restarts and more restarts, and any combination with the above options;

I even re-installed Windows from a fresh USB copy, but the problem persists.

Any idea of what could be happening?

Thanks!

 

Yes. I downloaded the newest ISO from Microsoft's website, installed it, and fully updated it.

Version 1909 (OS Compilation 18.363.77

 

Do you mean the mobile phone...... or is there some mobile feature in Windows?

If you mean just using a wifi dongle, I don't have those available. I would really like to just get to the bottom of this weird issue. It's weird because WIFI should work by re-installing Windows, but also because a hardware failure can be ruled out since wifi works under Linux.

 

When I have this problem I download multiple versions of drivers. Sometimes when chasing a bad driver I download at least 6 different versions or slightly different drivers. I'd google the wifi hardware & start collecting drivers. Official drivers don't always work.

 

So this is super weird.

I'm not sure what I did was the fix, but I dd'd the flash drive on Linux, created a GPT partition table, and a single fat32 partition.
Then I copied the contents from the W10 ISO into that partition.
It's funny because people said it wouldn't work since FAT32 only supports files up to 4 GB, but the "install.wim" file is bigger than that, it seems.

Then I installed Windows with the LAN cable disconnected, and voila: https://imgur.com/a/TTvMUyW

(I had installed Windows with the cable disconnected before and it didn't help).
(I was using rufus to setup my USB drives for install, then I used Linux and a simple copy/paste of the ISO contents and it worked).

 

It's worth noting that there may be a more recent wireless driver available, than the one for download on the Acer support page. The drivers listed on the support page are all quite old, as Acer - like most computer manufacturers, stop publishing drivers updates around 6 months or so after a computer is released, even though quite often new drivers continue to be released by the individual device manufactures.

For example, the Acer page has an Intel WiFi driver released in 2017 for download, even though Intel released a driver this year. It is quite possible that there also is a newer driver for your Atheros WiFi card.

 

Hah, no problem!

 

But...... WIFI wasn't working from a fresh install without a connection, so whatever default drivers were there from the beginning somehow worked Which is why I'm confused as to what happened.

 

On rare occasions the drivers installed by Windows Update cause issues.

 

Yeah what really happened here?

Slightly off topic months ago I installed W7 on an old laptop that hadn't been used for more than a year. Without an internet connection my laptop displayed the proper date & time. I think there's hidden networks open to fresh M$ installs.

 

Correct. But, as mentioned, this wasn't possible since I installed (and configured) Windows without an internet connection in the first place, so it's not possible for Windows update to have a role on it. This is why, to me, this is a mistery, because whatever default drivers Windows 10 has, they used to not work, but then worked out of the blue.

 

That was my first guess too

 

Open dot11Expert
Double click on adapter (once connected) and please post error stats.