wifi 6 issues

[Spynner]

Hello, 

I'm not network savvy so please bare with me for this question. I have a Intel Dual Band wireless ac-7260 driver on a Dell xps model that system assist shows as up-to-date (and no new drivers available). I was just wondering if this wireless driver is capable of recognizing/using wifi6 technology?

The reason I'm asking is that I recently upgraded to wifi6. All my other wireless clients (cells, tablets, etc.) don't seem to have an issue recognizing / using the network under it's given name, except for the Dell. My computer doesn't read / see the network name, but instead sees a 'new' network that shows up as 'hidden network'. I'm guessing this the my new wifi6 network that for some reason only the Dell sees as hidden. I've tried connecting to this hidden network using the usual credentials and settings, but nothing works. I've also tried some of the basic steps suggested by Microsoft etc. with no results, so before I dig even further, I was wondering if this driver is just to old and not easily updatable to be able to function on/recognize wifi6? Or if there's a simple solution I may have just missed.

Thanks for any help/insight into this issue.

[n_scott_pearson]

First of all, you have a WiFi5 router and it cannot communicate using the WiFi6 protocols. That said, it should still be able to communicate using the WiFi5 protocols with a WiFi6 Router, since WiFi6 Routers are required to be backwards-compatible with the WiFi5 protocols.

There was a bug in the 7260/3160 driver/firmware that made it incompatible with WiFi 6 Routers. In the final release of the driver before these adapters were discontinued, a fix for this bug was released. This release was also the one that provided Windows 10 support. Bottom line, you need to have this particular release installed in order to have the fix the issue. The driver that you need is v18.33.17.1. It is provided in package release v21.10.1.

Now, being discontinued (also) means that Intel is not providing any support for these adapters. This includes not providing any downloads for these adapters. Luckily, when I saw the discontinuation notice, I saved away copies of the final driver release packages in my archive. I currently have a portion of this archive in the cloud and you can download the driver packages (Wireless and Bluetooth) from there. Use this link: https://1drv.ms/f/s!AtacZBU04mo-j-tQ34BdSDv6y1BFsg?e=7gn50T to access my archive. Subfolders provide final driver packages for most of the Discontinued Wireless adapters.

Hope this helps,

...S