Issue with several Wi-Fi adapters on Windows 10 PRO x64 22H2 version 19045.2075.
Issue with several Wi-Fi adapters on Windows 10 PRO x64 22H2 version 19045.2075.
My job requires handling several separate connections, which I then link to VM's. I use wifi USB cards for this purpose. I faced some issues with my previous Windows 10 installation. For various reasons, the network adapters began failing to initialize—sometimes they wouldn’t power on or reported errors like device descriptor problems. About half of the fifteen devices showed issues. Usually, two or three random ones would stop working, then crash. In short, I couldn't identify a single cause, so I reinstalled Windows onto a new NVMe drive (though I suspected my old SSD might be failing, but it was fine). On the new system, all adapters start up immediately, but Windows only lets one or two active connections at once. I can connect four for a while and they function properly, yet eventually Windows disconnects them all. When I connect four, two disconnect, then one reconnects automatically. It seems Windows is waiting to fill the gap. All power settings are set to high performance, and networks are configured to auto-connect (only certain ones work). I saw elsewhere that this issue appeared on Windows 10. It worked for me during a recent update, which was fairly regular. That’s it—somehow Windows handles it better than hardware problems. I unplugged all adapters except one. With just one built-in Wi-Fi card, I tested two: a USB TLWN722N and the Intel built-in wireless AC 9260. Windows only lets one connect at a time long-term. Pairing them causes the first to disconnect quickly, then the second jumps in instantly using the other adapter. It looks like a strange Windows feature. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.
Are you certain you meant a bridge, since WiFi clients typically can't be bridged because they function differently from wired Ethernet connections? You'd likely need to set up NAT or pass through the whole device, or even the USB interface chip if a USB connection is involved. I'm not really sure how this would work on Windows—it isn't really built for this kind of setup.
I'm not very familiar with networking setup, and it often confuses me. Essentially, I connect to several networks using different Wi-Fi adapters on my main system. Once connected, I choose the bridge option in VirtualBox (VM settings → network → connect to: bridged network adapter (bridged)), assigning unique adapters to each VM. It seems the connection goes through the whole device or part of it, since it's simulating an adapter on the other side. Still, this isn't the main problem. It has worked for a few months on Windows and is now functioning again after switching to Ubuntu. I suspect the issue might be hardware-related. My USB ports managed by the north bridge behave oddly, causing devices linked to them to fail—Wi-Fi connections drop, disconnect, or initialize issues. This happened on both Windows and Ubuntu, so it's not OS-specific. The difference is that on Ubuntu, when all USB adapters are connected only to the USB 3.0 ports handled by the CPU, plus keyboard/mouse go to the likely faulty ones, Wi-Fi stays stable. On Windows, however, I keep switching networks and even with USB ports connected to the CPU, I remain stuck on one network. It probably points to a hardware fault or a software/hardware conflict, possibly related to the mouse/keyboard being tied to a bad USB controller. I plan to connect everything via CPU USB ports while leaving the faulty ones idle, then see if Windows behaves differently.