The WiFi on my Inspiron 14 5000 (Windows 10) has lately been quitting every so often, with two distinct failure modes:

-- Sometimes the network connection stops working, and the Windows network utility will say "No internet, secured" and the following two error messages will appear many times, in pairs, in the system events log:

Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6 AX201 160MHz : Has determined that the network adapter is not functioning properly. (source Netwtw10)

Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6 AX201 160MHz : Has encountered an internal error and has failed. (source Netwtw10)

Usually the network connection will spontaneously resume working after 10 to 30 minutes.

-- Other times, a more severe failure mode happens, where the network utility shows no available networks at all, and the Windows device manager, under Network adapters, shows the Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6 AX201 160MHz not working, and the following additional errors appear in the system events log (the first just once, and the second many times):

Miniport Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6 AX201 160MHz, {ca05faa9-6a54-4d29-95fe-d81f5d8eef79}, had event Fatal error: The miniport has detected an internal error (source NDIS)

ACPI: ACPI BIOS is attempting to write to an illegal PCI Operation Region (0x12), Please contact your system vendor for technical assistance. (source ACPI)

When this more severe type of failure happens, I need to restart the computer, sometimes 2-3 times, to regain WiFi functionality.

What I wondered was:  are these symptoms likely to indicate:

1) A driver problem, which could be solved by updating or reverting the driver

2) A hardware failure, and I need to get a new wireless “card” or whatever it is

3) Something else entirely