A mystery issue

BoxBoy1 · May 26, 2015

I have this issue where my girlfriends USB wireless adapter will suddenly stop being recognized by Windows and I have to unplug and replug or reinstall drivers to get it to work again. The adapter had worked fine for 2 years and has only recently started doing this after I reformatted to get rid of a virus.

I have tried 2 separate adapters and neither work for more than a few days before having the same issue. Sometimes even less though. I have also tried purchasing a wireless extender (Netgear WN2000rpt) and connected the desktop to the extender via ethernet and it refuses to find a connection even though the laptop will work perfectly fine using the same cable.

Here is the strange part. At my girlfriends house the desktop is unable to connect with the extender and the USB adapter fails frequently. However at my house it can connect fine via an ethernet connection with the extender and the adapter seems to fail very rarely. The only difference that I can tell is that I have a Comcast router and she has an ATT Uverse router. Although I'm not sure if that would make any difference.

This issue has been affecting us for the better part of 2 weeks now. I have reformatted upwards of 7 times, I have installed and reinstalled every driver I could think of, I have tried different USB ports and I have even gone so far as to have her purchase another Motherboard thinking that the previous one may have gone bad.

The system is running an AMD FX-6300 Vishera 3.5Ghz 6 core CPU
Socket AM3+

4GB DDR3 RAM

Win 7 64bit

480 Watt PSU

Nvidia GTX 650 GPU

Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2P (Original Motherboard)

Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 (New Replacement Motherboard)

The two wireless adapters are a Dynex Usb Adapter - Discontinued
Tenda W311MA

I'm at the end of my rope, any help would really be appreciated.