As we have already commented previously, on many occasions these problems are to blame the driver of the WiFi network card. The reasons why this problem usually happens are:
- The driver or driver is incorrectly installed.
- It has become corrupted or has stopped working for some reason.
- A Windows update has caused it to stop working properly. This usually happens after the important updates that this Microsoft operating system usually offers every 6 months.
As for the problems that we can find, if we do not have the WiFi network card driver updated, it would be a malfunction of the network connection, we could be exposed to security vulnerabilities and also have conflicts with the operating system in which we could get a screenshot. In the worst case it would be the blue screen of death.
In RedesZone we recommend that, if after putting the latest version of the driver we continue to have problems, we should review the configuration of our network equipment. We will have to check if the router broadcasts on the appropriate channel, we connect to the corresponding band, or if we would need to add a Wi-Fi repeater or Wi-Fi mesh system.
Things to consider before uninstalling the driver
If we want to do things correctly in the process of uninstalling the Wi-Fi network card driver from our computer, we must take into account several factors.
One of them is that we are going to lose the internet connection. Therefore, a good idea, if possible, would connect to the router by Ethernet network cable. In the case of laptops this operation is simpler, but if it is a desktop computer and we do not want to move it, it may be more interesting to download the driver from the manufacturer’s website.
Another very important thing to keep in mind before starting the procedure is that After uninstalling and reinstalling the Wi-Fi driver, all passwords will be deleted of the Wi-Fi networks that we have stored. Therefore, before we begin we must make sure that we do not lose any that are of vital importance to us. Thus, it is best to look at the keys first and write them down before starting the procedure.
How to correctly uninstall your Wi-Fi card driver
In the case of wanting to carry out the process of uninstalling the Wi-Fi network card driver, we are going to follow these steps:
- Let’s go to Start Menu Windows.
- We wrote Control Panel and we press enter.
- We choose Hardware and sound.
- Then inside Devices and printers we select Device administrator.
Once inside the Device administrator we have to go to the section Network adapters and look for our Wi-Fi network card.
After having located it, a highly recommended detail would be to find out the version of the driver or driver and then compare them. If we want to carry out this action, click on our card with the right mouse button and click on Properties. Then we go to the tab «Controller»And we look at its version and date so that we can then contrast them.
Now it is time to start the procedure to uninstall the wireless network card driver. Then we click on it with the right mouse button and select Uninstall the device.
Next we will see a screen like this one, where we will have to perform a series of steps:
If we uninstall normally, the Wi-Fi device will be uninstalled from our computer. However, the driver will be stored on our computer, and when looking for a new one, you have many possibilities of taking it again. For this reason, in this uninstall window, we must make sure to select the box Remove the driver software for this device. Sometimes it should be noted that this box does not appear and that in many cases is because the driver is provided to us by Microsoft itself.
Then we will press the button Uninstall and we will see how this process runs, which is usually very fast:
When we have completely uninstalled the driver, we have to restart our computer to apply all the changes correctly and that we do not have any type of problem.
Installing the Wi-Fi network card driver
After having uninstalled the driver as indicated before, we will see that this device has disappeared from our network adapters.
If you have your computer connected by network cable, then you can install a new driver for the network card by clicking on the button «Search for new hardware»That you have indicated with the red arrow above.
Next, we will see how after the installation of new drivers the device appears again, and what we are going to do is check in the same way that we did before that we have a more recent version of the driver.
If we compare both versions, it can be seen that we have gone from a version from 2018 to a more recent version from 2019. And what do we do if we don’t have Internet access on that computer? Then, since we already have the installer with the drivers that we have previously downloaded, we execute it to install it.
These drivers or drivers, the best place to download them is usually the website of the manufacturer of the network card or laptop as the case may be, it is possible that the manufacturer has stopped supporting the WiFi adapter or WiFi network card in question, in In this case, you should go directly to the official website of the chipset manufacturer of your WiFi network card. This way, you can download the latest drivers and make sure that you won’t have any more problems.
As you have seen, reinstalling the driver of your WiFi network card is really very simple, and totally recommended to avoid compatibility problems with new routers that use the WiFi 6 standard.
