Intel Dual-Band 8260AC PCIe not found in Win10, found in Ubuntu

[morrisbenji]

TL;DR Ubuntu finds and uses a PCIe Wifi card just fine, but Windows can't find it. (Apparently needs USB header connection on MB?)

Long Version:
I use a PCIe card with the Intel Dual Band 8260AC chipset. The interesting part is that it has a USB 2.0 header on it that you're supposed to plug into a header on the MB. I had it installed this way previously and it was working fine til last night. I upgrade my CPU/MB/RAM, but the new MB is one USB 2.0 header short. The old MB had 3, all filled, but the new MB has only 2 USB 2.0 headers and 1 USB 3.0 header, so one device is left out. I decided to leave the wifi card plugged into the PCIe slot, but not plugged into a MB header and fire it up and make sure everything else was working.

No surprise, but I had no wifi. Figured maybe a new driver might solve the issue as it seems weird to need both a PCIe slot and a USB connection. So I dug out a USB wifi dongle I had and proceeded to update/install every possible driver, BIOS, etc. for the new MB and the wifi card. Still nothing.

Just out of curiosity I rebooted into Ubuntu (latest 17.10), and voila! Wifi worked! I removed the USB dongle just to make sure, but it definitely works just fine in Ubuntu, but Windows 10 cannot find the device. This is without the USB connection BTW. I've installed and reinstalled the driver, but no dice.

Any thoughts on getting Windows to recognize the card without the USB header connected? And any thoughts on why Ubuntu can find and use the device just fine while Windows seems unable to?

 

[morrisbenji]

Huh. So it seems Windows doesn't recognize it even with the USB header plugged in. This is annoying.

 

[Wolfie]

Hi morrisbenji,

try the tips given in the following link:

https://communities.intel.com/thread/114442

 

[morrisbenji]

Unfortunately, rolling back to an earlier driver did not work. Thanks for looking into it though!

 

[Wolfie]

What version of W10 do you have?:

https://www.windows10forums.com/thr...ws-10-to-the-latest-version.13015/#post-73822

 

[morrisbenji]

Right, I did try to enable UEFI in BIOS, but I get message at boot up along the lines of "There is no Graphics Output Protocol detected on this card. Windows 8.1/10 features will be disabled." Not sure if that means my ancient GPU (Radeon 6770) does not support such things, or if there's a driver I need to update, but as far as I know my graphics driver is fully updated.

As far as Win10, I believe I have the latest Creator's Update. I'll look at your linked post more closely tonight when I get home.

I dual boot Ubuntu on a separate SSD, but Windows likes to screw up bootloaders every chance it gets, so I hesitate to do anything even resembling a reinstall of Windows.

 

[Wolfie]

Did you install Ubuntu in "Legacy Mode"?. Did you create a UEFI boot partition?.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/UEFI-and-BIOS

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFI

 

[morrisbenji]

I have two SSDs and one HDD. Before upgrading my MB, I had installed Windows on one SSD and Ubuntu on another, with Grub installed on the HDD. Given the age of my system, there was no such thing as UEFI firmware. After some frustration with Ubuntu and Win10 trying to mess up each other's bootloaders, I got everything working just fine. The Win10 SSD is the first boot device so my PC boots right into Windows by default. If I want to boot into Ubuntu, I restart, press F11 and choose the HDD as boot device.

When I upgraded my MB and CPU, I didn't do anything with the drives. I simply removed the old hardware and installed the new, plugging everything into the same slots. Ubuntu had zero issues with the process, but Windows now cannot load the driver for the network adapter.

As a side note Windows is no longer Activated, but that's another issue I'm working on. Digital license and all that nonsense.

So that's where I'm at. I get a Code 31 that the driver cannot be loaded.

I've tried everything I can with drivers, BIOS settings, registry edits, etc. Windows simply will not load the device. And I really, really don't want to reinstall Windows and lose all my programs and stuff.

I'm stumped. You got anything?

 

[Wolfie]

Yes as it happens!, go to the link below and download the latest Win 10 drivers (Ver 20.10.2 from 20.Nov.2017), that might do the trick?:

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/product/86068/Intel-Dual-Band-Wireless-AC-8260

 

[morrisbenji]

That was the first thing I did.

I really appreciate your patience and all the help. I've been round and round trying to figure this thing out.

 

[Wolfie]

Alrighty then,

lets try something different, you can do a fresh install of Win 10 and keep all your files by doing a reset but you will lose your apps most likely!. I know you said you don't want to do this but it may be the only way?.

See this section: "Install a clean version of Windows 10".

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...defender-track-your-device-performance-health

To recover Grub: https://sourceforge.net/p/boot-repair-cd/home/Home/