I have a dual boot system currently with Ubuntu and Windows. Over the last couple of months, I had a repeated experience of failing WiFi card when switching between operating systems. The wifi (and other wireless connections) seem to be in some kind of failed state (not showing up in linux at all as if my PC didn’t support wireless connections; windows sometimes shows erorrs such as “Device can not start (Code 10)”, other times doesn’t show up either).
It does not happen everytime and I am not sure what are the exact conditions. It seems to happen most often when I restart the system in Ubuntu and boot into Windows immediately. When this happens, the Windows loading screen always loads a for lot longer time. After the wifi fails, rebooting into any OS doesn’t help.
What always solves the issue is turning the computer off and unplugging it completely for at least a minute. After that, the wifi works just fine in both operating systems.
While this does solve the issue when it inevitably happens, it is a frustrating experience and I would like to know the underlying cause. I am not sure whether this is a hardware issue or where to look for errors.
I have used different linux distro on the same PC in the past and I had the same issues. I have also tried other troubleshooting steps such as reinstalling drivers, restarting the wifi device in Windows device manager with no luck. Could you please point me in the right direction?
