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jdwhite88

updated

5 years ago

J

jdwhite88

2 Posts

0

1857

March 5th, 2022 00:00

m15 R4, Killer AX1650 driver broken

TL;DR I have an Alienware m15 R4 and my Killer WiFi AX1650 WiFi card will frequently become inoperable and undiscoverable to both Device Manager and Dell Support Assist, forcing me to perform a networking reset and reboot as a very temporary fix. This occurred almost immediately after my WiFi card's driver updated to v22.100.0.3, which contains bugs that Intel has already addressed and patched as of 1/31/2022 (even though I can't use them on my machine). Dell still has not provided a corresponding driver or helpful solution to patch this, however, and I don't know how to fix this myself since I can't roll back...

The morning of February 17th, 2022, Dell/Windows distributed a driver update v22.100.0.3 to my Killer AX1650 WiFi card, which was automatically installed on my system. Immediately after applying this update, however, the WiFi card will randomly malfunction every 3 hours or so, and even more frequently causes spotty connection which disconnects me from WiFi. Looking into the system logs in Event Viewer, there have been many errors ever since the driver update occurred indicating that it is "not functioning properly" due to an unspecified "internal error" (resp. system Event IDs: 5002, 5005) whenever the WiFi card fails. Here is the first of many times it occurred:

jdwhite88_0-1646468169637.png

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(strangely, one time it also gave an error that "the version number is incorrect for this driver", and Device Manager still thinks the last successful driver update was on 10/18/2021...)

I cannot solve this by rolling back the driver update to the previous known-working versions because the option is greyed-out in Device Manager. This problem is very unhelpfully addressed in this Dell Knowledge Base article, and it only suggests updating the BIOS (the latest update v1.8.0 as of 3/4/2022 was installed maybe an hour or so after the faulty WiFi driver was, and intentionally I can't rollback that either...)

And so, looking into the Intel/Killer drivers for a potential patch, it appears that the subsequent driver update v22.110.1.1 (included in package v3.1122.183, dated 1/31/2022) is intended as a fix for the exact problem I observed: "Wi-Fi connectivity loss (Event Viewer system event log ID 5002/5005/5007)". However, I discovered that these direct-from-manufacturer drivers are entirely incompatible with Dell's, and so I cannot use them without replacing most networking drivers on my system.

Dell's last update to these drivers was published over a month and a half ago (v2.100), and yet it has been over a month since Intel's driver patch that fixes this issue (v2.110) has been released. Since it makes my computer's Internet connection very spotty and unreliable, and the only current (temporary) solution is to have Windows Troubleshooter perform a Networking Reset and restart my computer-- also forcing me to re-configure my known networks-- every time it malfunctions, I'm getting impatient waiting for Dell's corresponding patch to the drivers.

Is there anything else I can do while I continue waiting for Dell to (hopefully) authorize their version v22.110.1.1 of the patched driver updates? I can't deal with unreliable internet connection for much longer. Thanks!