I'm living in a dorm where wired internet isn't available, so I brought a friend's PC and bought a TP-Link BE3600 USB Wi‑Fi adapter. Other devices, including a Nintendo Switch and several laptops, connect normally. After installing the adapter's driver, the PC worked for a while, although the connection was slow. During a longer session, the entire system became extremely sluggish and even the Settings app stopped loading, so I had to restart it manually. After reinstalling the driver, the problem happened again. When I booted the PC without the adapter, Task Manager didn't show anything unusual, but plugging it back in quickly caused the computer to freeze and restart. Could the adapter or its driver be causing this, and is there anything I should try before returning it?
2 Answers
Try a different USB port, preferably a USB 2.0 port or one directly on the back of the PC instead of a hub or front-panel port. Remove the current driver completely, install the latest driver from TP-Link for the exact adapter model and your Windows version, and check Windows Event Viewer for errors around the time of the freeze. If the crashes follow the adapter across multiple ports and driver installations, I’d return or replace it—an unstable Wi‑Fi adapter isn’t worth risking system lockups.
First, test the PC for a while with the adapter completely unplugged. Then check Task Manager for unusually high CPU, memory, disk, or network usage. If the system remains stable until the adapter is connected, that strongly points to the adapter, its driver, or a USB compatibility problem rather than the internet connection itself.
Without the adapter, Task Manager looked normal. Connecting it again caused the PC to freeze fairly quickly, although it seemed stable after another restart for the moment.