Problems with Dell Wireless 1703 Network Adapter

This is for dedicated sleuths--at least for the time being I am up and running. I would love a fix for this but I'm working around my problem for the time being. 

I have a Dell 8500 XPS running Win 8.1. A few months ago, I lost internet connectivity and eventually realized that my 1703 Wireless Adapter was flagged with a yellow triangle/exclamation point. At the time, rather than getting a browser page saying that the page I was attempting to view was unavailable or other indication that I was not connected, Google Chrome just kept churning, trying to connect. This was the case also with Steam's Updater -- just kept trying rather than failing, and with a third program trying update upon start.

Although I am a little cloudy on exactly how I resolved this at the time, I believe that the eventual fix was to uninstall the device and reboot. I'm not sure if I did it for this occurrence, but for subsequent occurrences of this problem I ended up downloading and installing the latest 1703 device driver from Dell.

However, (Restart)ing does not work. If I Restart, i.e., warm boot, after uninstalling the adapter, the adapter reappears under Device Manager with the yellow triangle (Error 31-Windows could not load driver). I have to uninstall, power down completely, and restart the computer. Then the adapter functions and I have to reconnect to my router and re-enter security credentials. I make it a point now not to allow software updates to restart my computer--I decline restart, power down, and restart cold and in general things work just fine for weeks at a time.

Having gone through this several times, I believe that the adapter getting glitched is related to Windows Updates. Whenever I have a Windows Update, the adapter gets glitched and I have to uninstall and cold start, sometimes having to reinstall the Dell driver update.

Last night, Windows Updated as I powered down, and this morning when I started, the adapter glitched. Uninstalling/rebooting did not work; reinstalling the Dell driver did not work. I attempted a System Restore -- it said it failed because it could not access a file, but when I powered down and restarted, the adapter finally worked properly.

My suspicion is that Windows Updates are installing a bad generic driver thinking it is the latest/best driver. I found the option in Windows Update that allows me to manually update my drivers and turned that on. I noticed that there was an important Update pending (not sure if it was new or in fact the System Restore actually worked). I installed it manually, and upon Restart (warm) the adapter was glitched.  Power down/restart fixed the issue (I did not have to reinstall the Dell driver).

A couple other observations from troubleshooting:

I looked at this link from the Welcome sticky: How to Fix Limited Wi-Fi Connectivity Issue in Windows 8.1. Where the example shows two drivers, one by Microsoft, one by the manufacturer, my computer showed two identical drivers without any identification as to the source. I clicked on one and Next, thinking I would have further options/information, and that driver was installed and the adapter immediately glitched. I tried the other one and got the same result.

I also found the "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" checkbox, which one or more tips suggest should be unchecked.  When I unchecked the box, the adapter immediately glitched.   

Time will tell if not allowing Windows Update to update my device drivers helps. However, I am really curious as to the difference between a Restart and a start from completely powered down. Does Windows actually do something differently in a Restart? Given the above, it seems like Windows is refreshing device drivers. 

As I mentioned above, I am running fine with my workarounds, but I would love to hear any information or insight you may have on these issues.